Cody McFadyen: Shadow Man, Kartoniert / Broschiert

Description

Once, Special Agent Smoky Barrett hunted serial killers for the FBI. She was one of the best - until a madman terrorized her family, killed her husband and daughter, and left her face scarred and her soul brutalized. Turning the tables on the killer, Smoky shot him dead - but her life was shattered forever.
Now Smoky dreams about picking up her weapon again. She dreams about placing the cold steel between her lips and pulling the trigger one last time. Because for a woman who's lost everything, what is there left to lose?
She's about to find out.
In all her years at the Bureau, Smoky has never encountered anyone like him - a new and fascinating kind of monster, a twisted genius who defies profilers' attempts to understand him. And he's issued Smoky a direct challenge, coaxing her back from the brink with the only thing that could convince her to live.
The killer videotaped his latest crime - an act of horror that left a child motherless - then sent a message addressed to Agent Smoky Barrett. The message is enough to shock Smoky back to work, back to her FBI team. And that child awakens something in Smoky she thought was gone forever.
Suddenly the stakes are raised. The game has changed. For as this deranged monster embarks on an unspeakable spree of perversion and murder, Smoky is coming alive again - and she's about to face her greatest fears as a cop, a woman, a mother...and a merciless killer's next victim.
From the Hardcover edition.

Review

"Few men who write serial-killer novels have created a woman of such depth [as heroine Smoky Barrett].... a powerful mixture of strength and vulnerability, courage and fear. In a strange way, Barrett's mingled roles as woman, victim and avenger make the novel as humane as it is violent..... If you can handle the violence, it will be among the best crime fiction you will read this year." - Washington Post
"Terrifically good, terrifically scary.... McFadyen seems to have done ample research on the mind-set of serial killers to give his characters more believability.... This one's very hard to put down." - San Francisco Chronicle Books
"A thriller that mixes Michael Connelly-style procedural details with gore that's Thomas Harris ornate." - Entertainment Weekly
"Disturbing ... a promising debut for McFadyen, who combines many conventions of hte genre by with far more exquisite, intricate results than the norm.... Pack[s] a visceral punch." - Publishers Weekly
"Coldly, stunningly brilliant. Move over Thomas Harris, Mcfadyen has brought a new game to town." - Lisa Gardner
' Shadow Man is one of the most powerful and authentic portrayals of a serial killer and the people who hunt them I have ever read. It kept me riveted right to the last page. Cody Mcfadyen is the real thing." - John E. Douglas, author Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit
"First-time novelist McFadyen writes like an old pro ... A series to watch." - Booklist
From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpt from the book

I HAVE ONE of the dreams. There are only three; two are beautiful, one is violent, but all of them leave me shivering and alone.
The one I have tonight is about my husband. It goes something like this:
I could say he kissed my neck, and leave it like that, simplicity. But that would be a lie, in the most basic way that the word was created to mean.
It would be more truthful to say that I yearned for him to kiss my neck, with every molecule of my being, with every last, burning inch of me, and that when he did, his lips were the lips of an angel, sent from heaven to answer my fevered prayers.
I was seventeen then, and so was he. It was a time when there was no blandness or darkness. There was only passion, sharp edges, and a light that burned so hard it hurt the soul. He leaned forward in the darkness of the movie theater and (Oh God) he hesitated for just a moment and (Oh God) I quivered on a precipice but pretended to be calm, and Oh God Oh God Oh God he kissed my neck, and it was heaven, and I knew right then and there that I would be with him forever.
He was my one. Most people, I know, never find their one. They read about it, dream about it, or scoff at the idea. But I found mine, I found him when I was seventeen, and I never let him go, not even the day he lay dying in my arms, not even when death ripped him from me as I screamed, not even now.
God's name these days means suffering: Oh God Oh God Oh God - I miss him so.
I wake with the ghost of that kiss on my flushed seventeen-year-old skin, and realize that I am not seventeen, and that he has stopped aging at all. Death has preserved him at the age of thirty-five, forever. To me, he is always seventeen years old, always leaning forward, always brushing my neck in that perfect moment.
I reach over to the spot he should be sleeping in, and I am pierced with a pain so sudden and blinding that I pray as I shiver, pray for death and an end to pain. But of course, I go on breathing, and soon, the pain lessens.
I miss everything about him being in my life. Not just the good things. I miss his flaws as achingly as I miss the beautiful parts of him. I miss his impatience, his anger. I miss the patronizing look he would give me sometimes when I was mad at him. I miss being annoyed by the fact he'd always forget to fill the gas tank, leaving it near empty when I was ready to go somewhere.
This is the thing, I think often, that never occurs to you when you consider what it would be like to lose someone you love. That you would miss not just the flowers and kisses, but the totality of the experience. You miss the failures and little evils with as much desperation as you miss being held in the middle of the night. I wish he were here now, and I was kissing him. I wish he were here now, and I was betraying him. Either would be fine, so fine, as long as he was here. People ask sometimes, when they get up the courage, what it's like to lose someone you love. I tell them it's hard, and leave it at that.
I could tell them that it's a crucifixion of the heart. I could say that most days after, I screamed without stopping, even as I moved through the city, even with my mouth closed, even though I didn't make a sound. I could tell them I have this dream, every night, and lose him again, every morning.
But, hey, why ruin their day? So I tell them it's hard. That usually seems to satisfy them. This is just one of the dreams, and it gets me out of bed, shaking.
I stare at the empty room, and then turn to the mirror. I have learned to hate mirrors. Some would say that this is normal. That all of us do this, put ourselves under the microscope of self-reflection and focus on the flaws. Beautiful women create fret and worry lines by looking for those very things. Teenage girls with beautiful eyes and figures to die for weep because their hair is the wrong color, or they think their nose is too big. The price