Head To Head
(Linda Ladd)
In the suspiciously innocent prologue title, Linda Ladd introduces the embalmer, and the chill begins. It intensifies as we meet the mother and the son, and the intensity would be unbearable if author Linda Ladd didn't know when to allow us a bit of comic relief.
Experienced, funny, and tough Detective Claire Morgan, in jeans and t-shirt and packing a Glock, investigates a murder more gruesome than anything her imagination could have devised. In a peaceful Missouri Ozarks retreat peopled with the gloriously rich among down-to-earth folk, a brutal killer pursues his revenge, and the reader, like Claire herself, never suspects the actual motive or identify of the pure evil until the last possible moment. Although the reader knows the identity of the killer on one level, the final revelation is as much a blow to the reader as it is to Detective Morgan.
Detective Morgan conceals her own agony even as she is increasingly attracted to Dr. Nicholas Black, who occupies the top slot on Morgan's suspect list for much of the story. It is hard to imagine charming Dr Black capable of fhe atrocities that occur again and again, but the evidence is strong, and detective Morgan struggles to hold herself away, magnetic as the doctor is. She fears the potential for pain in romance, and her defense is humor on the edge of sarcasm, but her kindness is evident throughout the story.
In Head to Head (the perfect title), Linda Ladd manages to conceal the true identity of the killer in as clever a plot as has ever been developed. It's a brilliant feat that leaves the reader breathless. Something previously beyond experience creeps up a read's spine throughout Ladd's first real-time horror/detective story that is as believable as it is terrifying.
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