Ninth Lou Boldt

How do you keep a series you’ve been writing for almost fifteen years fresh? Completely change perspective.

The Body of David Hayes opens with Lou Boldt winding his way through traffic in his Crown Vic, heading to the scene of an assault on an officer. The officer in question, Danny Foreman, is an old friend of Boldt’s and a solo stakeout ended with Foreman knocked out from a stun gun. Missing from the scene is the owner of the trailer turned bloody crime scene Foreman was watching – David Hayes.

Years earlier, David Hayes managed to embezzle seventeen million dollars from Westcorp Bank. The bank that employs Boldt’s wife, Liz. Liz had had an affair with David Hayes; an affair that nearly destroyed Boldt’s marriage. When she ended the affair, computer wiz kid Hayes, embezzled the money. He was eventually caught, but the money was never recovered. The bank, the police and the Russian mob, want it. When Hayes contacts Liz about accessing the bank's mainframe, she is pulled deep into the mire surrounding the money. The stolen millions are trapped in cyberspace, and Hayes needs the access codes provided to only a handful of people at Westcorp to get at it. He claims his life depends on Liz. The mob will kill him if the money isn’t released to them. Boldt, skeptical under the best circumstances, doesn’t think Hayes is telling the whole truth. An elaborate scheme is set up that has a double standing in for Liz. But the mob finds out.

Boldt needs to find Hayes and the money in order to keep Liz and his family out of harm's way. And he’ll sacrifice his career and his own life to make that happen.

Pearson grabs the reader from page one in The Body of David Hayes, the ninth in the Lou Boldt/Daphne Matthews series. Forensic psychologist Matthews takes a back seat Boldt’s wife, Liz in this installment. This brings to the mix the unexplored emotional complexity of Boldt’s long-term marriage and the impact of an affair that nearly destroyed it. The scenes between the couple are fraught with tension and long buried hurt as they deal with the ramifications of an event neither has gotten over.

“For what it’s worth, with him it was never ‘making love.’ It was sex. An escape. Nothing more.”

“That’s not worth anything. Not to me,” Lou said, “though I’m certainly glad that you made the distinction.”

This back-story builds the level of apprehension as the reader follows fighting to save his wife’s life and their marriage. Pearson still hasn’t topped The Angelmaker for its level of excitement and its quality of writing, but The Body of David Hayes is a solid read.

Jennifer Jordan