(oversized pb; 2021: ninth
book in the Jane Whitefield series)
From the back cover
“Jane Whitefield helps people disappear. Fearing for their lives, fleeing dangerous situations, her clients come to her when they need to vanish completely.
“Her newest comes fresh from
LA with a whole lot of trouble behind her. After she cheated on her boyfriend,
he dragged her to the home of the offending man and made her watch as he killed
him. She testified against the boyfriend, but a bribed jury acquitted him, and
now he’s free and on her trail. Jane agrees to help, and it soon becomes clear
that outsmarting the murderous boyfriend is not beyond Jane’s skills. But the
boyfriend has some new friends: members of a Russian organized crime brotherhood,
intent to capture not only Sara but Jane, whose secrets could be worth
millions.
Thus begins a bloodthirsty
chase that winds through the cities of the northeast before finally plunging
into Maine’s Hundred Mile Wilderness. But in a pursuit where nothing can be
trusted, one thing is certain: only one party—Jane or her pursuers—will emerge
alive.”
Review
“Three or four years” after Jane’s kidnapping and torture in Poison Flower, Jane guides a young woman (Sara Doughton, later renamed Anne Preston Bailey) into a safer, not-on-the-predatory-radar life after Sara breaks into Jane’s old family house—Sara’s reason for doing so is that she’s trying to escape an obsessive, murderous, and across-the-board abusive boyfriend (Albert) who’s terrorizing her, even more so after she testified against him in court. Initially (relatively) easy, things become more exponentially more difficult when one of Albert’s friends enlists the Russian mob to help the selfish, immature Albert to trap his erstwhile ex anew.
Like the best Jane Whitefield novels, Left-Handed has tight editing, excellent, reader-immersing pacing and characterization, Native American/Seneca lore, short and sharp action sequences, plot- and character-relevant mentions of Jane’s past (shown in previous franchise books), and a satisfying ending that pushes Jane and her husband Carey into new, life-altering situations, even as another new, possibly series-spanning villain (smart, nuanced Russian enforcer Magda, another Jane doppelgänger) rises into prominence. Looking forward to Perry's next Jane Whitefield book!
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