True Evil by Greg Iles

Alexander Morse, former FBI Hostage Negotiator, turned rogue agent after her 35-year old sister sister dies of a stroke, but not before accusing her husband of killing her. She begs Alex to save her son from his father. Alex vows to honor her sister's last wish. She works effortlessly until she stumbles upon a plan between unscrupulous lawyer and a diabolical doctor who have inflicted a number of people with terminal diseases after their spouses seeks out the lawyer for divorce proceedings. Alex's brother-in-law was one of those spouses. Now Alex has identified the next victim, Dr. Chris Shepard, husband of a bored wife who doesn't want to give up her son or the money. When Alex approaches Chris with a plan to entrap his wife, Chris is at first dubious, but after evidence of an affair, he agrees to help Alex.

The story had me from page one, not something I can say about most books. The plot was intricate and suspenseful, a true page-turner of a book, even though the plot was a bit far-fetched. What made this story so enjoyable were the characters of Alex and Chris. They were so multidimensional, fallible humans...totally sympathetic characters. I was rooting for Alex the whole way through. My one quibble is that this almost 500 page book could have lost at least 50 pages at the end of the book. The ending seemed to go on too long once the culprits were revealed. The last scene on water seemed totally extraneous.


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