FACE OF A KILLER

An FBI forensic artist finally solves her father’s homicide.

Sydney Fitzpatrick has spent 20 years forgetting what she knew about her father’s death, a robbery gone bad in his pizza parlor. But with just ten days to go before Johnnie Wheeler is to be executed at San Quentin for the crime, Sydney decides she wants to meet him face-to-face. Her remarried mother, appalled, asks family friend Senator Donovan Gnoble, now running for reelection, to dissuade her, but Sydney is undeterred. Soon thereafter, she receives a packet, sent by a Washington office-seeker just before he committed suicide, hinting that her father may have been a blackmailer who took part in Black Ops. Then her ex-fiancé appears on her doorstep and warns her to butt out. But Sydney, more and more certain that Wheeler was framed and determined to uncover the truth, tracks down her father’s old service buddies, setting herself up as an assassination target in the process. Meanwhile, her regular FBI caseload includes hunting down a serial rapist whose killing spree has led him across state lines. Before Sydney sorts out the good guys from the bad and ties her father’s murder to global banking irregularities and coverups, she’ll have to deal with bullets in Baja, arson in her apartment and a confrontation that endangers her mother, half-sister and stepfather.

Burcell (Cold Case, 2004, etc.) will have conspiracy buffs salivating—as long as they skip the cutesy business with her neighbor’s dog and her hunky FBI partner.