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Penguin Putnam Books
Category:
Mainstream
Publisher: Berkley/Penguin Putnam Bks.
ISBN-10: 0425184927
Type: Fiction
Pages: 309
Copyright: Mar 1 2000
Winner of the Readrs Choice Award at the 5th Annual Love is Murder Writers Conference Feb. 7-9 outdistancing 40 other authors. SUMMARY: When an appellate court judge is abducted and lashed to the decaying body of a man she saw electrocuted, Dr. Jessica Coran must find her before she dies the death reserved for murderers in Roman Times, according to the executed man's insane father who knows his Bible well. It's a tale of twisted and fantatical fixation on the old theme of an eye for an eye--vengeance with a bite.
In UnNatural Instinct, Dr. Jessica Coran of the FBI teams up with Cherokee Detective Lucas Stonecoat (star of my Edge series--Cutting Edge, Double Edge, Cold Edge and Fall 2003's Final Edge). Jessica works from the Washington DC area long-distance with Lucas who works all angles from Houston Texas. Texas is where Jimmy Lee Purdy is executed, but since Judge Maureen DeCampe has relocated, and now has been abducted from the courthouse parking lot in DC. The heroes pursue an unlikely old farmer in a big RV with two coffins in the back--one containing the dead body of Jimmy Lee, the other the sedated judge. Once at his hidden location somwehere across the vast landscape between Houston and DC, the bible-totting old Isaiah Purdy takes out his revenge on the woman who has taken his last seed from this earth. He reeks his revenge in the manner prescribed by his son before his death--in the manner of the Roman authorities who lashed the murder victim to the back of the perpetrator, thus allowing the dead man his revenge on the living. The clock is ticking, and time is fast running out, as a psychic tells Jessica precisely what is happening (blow-by-blow, blothc-by-blotch) to Judge DeCampe. The psychic knows because she has discolorations and decay spots welling up all over her own body as a result of her empathy with the victim, and since the psychic is Jessica's longtime friend and FBI profiler Dr. Kim Desinor, she is doubly invested in finding Purdy and putting an end to this horror, as Kim is soon hospitalized and dying in unison of a disease doctors can't pinpoint.
The action is break-neck and the informational base lends the novel a sense of reality that makes it all the more chilling. The Sunday Oklahoman said of it, "Chilling, gruesome, and really different." While the San Francisco Examiner shouted, "If you're a fan of Patricia Cornwell's, yuo'll love this book!" Boolist calls it a "satisfying and disturbing thriller."
Excerpt
Prologue: begins with a prison letter quote from the twisted, evil Jimmy Lee Purdy to his parents, a bastardization of the Biblical lines of 1 Corinthians 13.4 that sets the tone and reads:
Love is impatient; love is unkind and envies everyone. Love is ever boastful, or conceited, or rude; ever selfhis, and quick to take offense. Love keeps scores of wrongs....There are some things love cannot face; there are some limits to its faith, its hope and endurance. Love will always come to a bad end.
The first sentences the novel then follow this with:
From an extremely limited vantage point, her head duck-taped to the face of a dead man's cheek, the slightly obese woman could only see her left hand--tied as it were--to the right hand of a decaying corpse.
From Chapter One:
Dr. Jessica Coran, FBI medical examiner, had almost forgotten that the letters M.E. followed her name. The two months off since Richard Sharpe's arrival at Dulles International Airport had been a godsend--and amazingly enough, no calls from the office of the lab. Nothing but a blissful opportunity for her and Richard to orient themselves in a new life that would change and align their futures, most certainly for the better....But in the middle of the finest Greek lobster she had ever eaten, a waiter placed a phone at the table and plugged it in, saying, "Dr. Coran. It's for you."
"How the devil does Eriq know I'm here?" she lamented, knowing the call would take her away from Richard..
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