{"product_id":"nightlife-isbn-9780345496003","title":"Nightlife","description":"\u003cb\u003eA detective’s murder investigation takes a perilous turn when she becomes the elusive serial killer’s next target in this “bone-chilling [and] transfixing crime story” (\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e) from the award-winning author of \u003ci\u003eThe Butcher’s Boy.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“A fast-paced thriller . . . tightly plotted, with a lot of action and plenty of twists.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Denver Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen the cousin of Los Angeles underworld figure Hugo Poole is found shot to death in his home in Portland, Oregon, homicide detective Catherine Hobbes is determined to solve the case. But her feelings, and the investigation, are complicated when Hugo simultaneously hires private detective Joe Pitt. As Joe and Catherine form an uneasy alliance, the murder count rises. Following the evidence, Catherine finds herself in a deadly contest with a cunning female adversary capable of changing her appearance and identity at will. Catherine must use everything she knows, as a detective and as a woman, to stop a murderer who kills on impulse and with ease, and who becomes more efficient and elusive with each crime.“Extraordinary . . . bone-chilling . . . [a] tight, transfixing crime story [with] suspenseful chessboard plotting.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A fast-paced thriller . . . tightly plotted, with a lot of action and plenty of twists.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Denver Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Superbly suspenseful . . . Instilling dread may be cruel work, but [Perry is] the man for the job.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eNew York Daily News\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The action flows swiftly and, like a finely chilled martini, \u003ci\u003eNightlife\u003c\/i\u003e turns out to be hard to put down.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Miami Herald\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“There are probably only half a dozen suspense writers now alive who can be depended upon to deliver high-voltage shocks, vivid, sympathetic characters, and compelling narratives each time they publish. Thomas Perry is one of them. \u003ci\u003eNightlife\u003c\/i\u003e, his tale of a female serial killer who starts hunting the female police officer trying to catch her, is original and highly entertaining. I can’t imagine any reader finishing this and thinking he or she didn’t get his or her money’s worth. And it’s scary! I say that with deep admiration.”\u003cb\u003e—Stephen King\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Perry’s dialogue is strong as steel and the story paced faster than a late-night bullet. Thrillers just don’t get any better than this one.”\u003cb\u003e—Lorenzo Carcaterra, author of \u003ci\u003eSleepers\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling author \u003cb\u003eThomas Perry\u003c\/b\u003e won an Edgar Award for \u003ci\u003eThe Butcher’s Boy\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eMetzger’s Dog\u003c\/i\u003e was one of the\u003ci\u003e New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e’s Notable Books of the Year. His other books include \u003ci\u003eThe Face-Changers\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eShadow Woman\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eDance for the Dead\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eVanishing Act\u003c\/i\u003e. Thomas Perry died in 2025.Chapter 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Tanya stood in front of the full-length mirror on the bedroom wall and   brushed her hair. She watched the other girl, in another room, wearing   the same new blue skirt and tank top, using her left hand instead of   her right to brush the long blond hair to a shine. Tanya had always   secretly relished the existence of the other pretty girl who lived in   the other room beyond the glass, like a fish in an aquarium. She loved   the whole idea of a second girl who lived a second life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In Wheatfield when she was little she had sometimes turned her mother’s   dresser so the mirror would be directly across from the full-length one   on the closet door. She could make a whole long line of other girls,   then kick her legs and look like the Rockettes, the nearest ones as big   as she was, and the others smaller and smaller as their line stretched   off into infinity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She had dressed up in her mother’s clothes sometimes, so she could   change the girl in the mirror. She would be someone who had a good   life, someone who was loved and cared for, someone who was beautiful   and had everything she wanted.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She could invent things that the girl in the mirror could say, and   practice them, whispering so the girl in the mirror would not be   overheard. She would assume faces that were distant and just a little   disapproving, and know that seeing them would make people frantic,   trying to find ways to please her. She tried expressions designed to   reward too, opening her eyes and mouth wide in a grateful smile that   admitted no possibility of darker thoughts, nothing held back or   hidden. Sometimes when she did that she would add a laugh at the   end—not a small, forced sound, but a delighted laugh that made her eyes   glisten and her white teeth show to their best advantage.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The alarm system’s cool male electronic voice announced, “Kitchen . . .   door”: Dennis was finally home. This was it. Tanya stopped brushing her   hair, slipped the brush into her purse, felt for the other handle and   gripped it once, then released it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She could hear Dennis’s hard leather soles on the slate floor of the   kitchen. There was no sound of his dropping his briefcase on the   kitchen floor, so he had set it down gently: he had brought his laptop   home again. He was planning to spend the evening working. “Tanya?” He   was in the living room now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She put her purse on the floor beside the dresser. “Up here.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She spent the next fifteen seconds considering him—turning him around   and around in her mind and evaluating him. Women always said men had a   hard outer shell but were soft and sweet and vulnerable inside, but she   had found the opposite. They had a layer outside that was yielding and   squeezable, but when you squeezed you began to feel the hardness   beneath, like bone. She had squeezed him a lot in a short time, and she   was already beginning to reach the hardness. He was getting ready to   say no to her, to deny her things. Maybe he would even criticize her   when the bills came and he could see everything added up. It was time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Dennis’s heavy shoes thumped on the carpeted stairway, coming closer.   She already saw each step of the stairway in her mind, even though she   had only been with Dennis Poole for a month, and all but a week of that   had been spent in hotels. As he climbed step by step, she began to   enumerate his unpleasant qualities. She didn’t like his laugh. It was a   quick staccato that made his voice go one octave higher, like a   jackass’s bray. A few times she had gotten up from her chaise next to   him and gone into the hotel pool to cool her sun-warmed skin, come up   from underwater, and seen him looking at other women in their bathing   suits. He tipped waiters exactly fifteen percent and never a penny   more, and was proud of it because it showed he could do the arithmetic   in his head. He was not a sincerely appreciative lover. He pretended to   care and be solicitous of her, but there was a practical quality about   it. His concern was to please her, but it wasn’t the right kind of   concern. He wasn’t a man unable to stop himself because he was   enthralled. He was merely thinking about whether he was pleasing her   enough to keep her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Dennis had reached the top of the stairs. As she turned to look at him,   her detachment was complete. He was a forty-two-year-old man with a   soft belly and thinning hair who spent his days selling computer   equipment to other men like himself. He was nothing. She smiled   beautifully, stepped into his embrace, and kissed him slowly,   languorously. “Hello, cowboy,” she whispered.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He laughed as she had expected. “I could get used to coming home like   this and finding you waiting for me.” He looked more serious. “You   know, I’m glad you were here for another reason. I think we need to   talk about some things.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Sure. We can talk, but first, don’t you want to get comfortable? I   should think you’d be tired after sitting in that office all day.” She   knew that tone of voice. Anyone could tell he was getting ready to be   cheap with her, to start complaining about money. She pulled back and   said, “I’ll bet you’re sick of wearing that suit. Why don’t you get out   of it, relax, and soak in the tub?” She looked down at his tie as she   loosened it, not into his eyes. “Maybe I’ll join you.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Good idea.” He took his suit coat off and his tie, while Tanya went   into the bathroom and turned on the water. The oversized Jacuzzi tub   had jets that bubbled, so she turned them on too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Dennis Poole was naked now, and he put his arms around her. She   tolerated his embrace for a few seconds, then wriggled away and   whispered seductively, “Wait.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She went back out to the bedroom and walked to the dresser, where she   had left her purse. She waited until she heard him turn off the water   faucet, so the only sound was the steady burble of the jets. She   quietly walked into the bathroom.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He was lying in the tub with his head cushioned by a folded towel,   looking self-absorbed and distant as the bubbles massaged his skin.   Tanya reached into her purse, took out the pistol, held it about a foot   from his head, and squeezed. The report was a bright, sharp bang that   echoed against the tile walls and made her ears ring. She turned away   from the sight of his corpse, the red blood draining into the bath, and   stopped being Tanya Starling.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    2\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Hugo Poole’s rubber-soled shoes made almost no sound as he walked along   the sidewalk outside the CBS Studio Center’s iron railings, past the   soundstages on his way up Radford Street from Ventura Boulevard. He   never would have set up a night meeting in the Valley, so far from the   old downtown movie theater he used for an office, but he had often   found that it was worth making small concessions just to learn what the   other side wanted to do. There was no single precaution that would   always work, and the least effective was never taking a risk. As soon   as caution turned predictable, it became the biggest risk of all.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Still, he wished he could stay right here. He liked being near a   television studio, because these complexes were usually on the   itineraries of the people who heard voices telling them that God wanted   them to punish a few actors. That ensured that there would always be   plenty of jumpy security guards. He would have preferred to meet Steve   Rao right here outside the gate, under the tall security lights.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Hugo Poole walked on beside the railing, now moving into the dimly   lighted eucalyptus-lined blocks beside the big parking structure, and   then he stopped at Valleyheart Street. He crossed the street to the   city’s chain-link fence and looked through it to the place where the   concrete bed of the Tujunga Wash met the concrete bed of the Los   Angeles River. On this hot midsummer night, the only water was the   runoff from automatic lawn sprinklers, a steady trickle confined to a   foot-deep groove a man could step across that ran down the center of   each bed. In the rainy season this place became the confluence of two   turbulent brown floods crashing together at thirty miles an hour and   rushing south toward the Pacific.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Hugo Poole looked to his left, up the scenic walkway above the river   toward the iron gate at Laurel Canyon that was designed to look like a   big toad. At this hour nobody wanted to go for a walk above a concrete   riverbed. He waited for the minute hand of his watch to reach the hour.   Then he took out the key he had received in the mail. He unlocked the   padlock on the gate above the wash, and slipped inside. Steve Rao’s   people had knocked off the city padlock and put on their own, then sent   him the key to open it. Hugo Poole took a moment to close the gate. He   reached into his pocket, took out his own lock, and placed it on the   gate. He stuck Rao’s key into Rao’s lock, tossed them both down the   hill into the bushes, and walked on.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He descended the sloping gravel driveway that the city had cut so its   maintenance people could come down once a year to remove the tangle of   dried brush and shopping carts from the concrete waterway before the   rains. He reached the bottom, took a few steps onto the pavement of the   river, and stopped to look around him. He could hear the distant   whisper of cars flashing along the Ventura Freeway a few blocks away,   and a constant dribble of water dripping out of a storm drain and   running down the wall a few feet from him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Hugo Poole’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and picked out four   silhouettes in the deeper shadow across the wash. They floated toward   him, and Poole tried to pick out Steve Rao’s short, strutting body, but   couldn’t.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The one who separated from the others was too tall to be Steve Rao.   “What are you doing here?” the voice said. It was young, with a trace   of Spanglish inflection.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It was the wrong question. Somebody Steve Rao had sent would know why   Hugo was here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Hugo Poole said, “I’m not here to hurt you. That’s all you need to know   about me.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The heads of the four shapes turned to one another in quiet   consultation, and Hugo Poole prepared himself, waiting for them to   spread out. There was a sudden, sharp blow to his skull that made a red   flare explode in his vision and knocked his head to the side. He spun\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    to see the two new shapes just as they threw their shoulders into him.   His head snapped back and his spine was strained as they dug in and   brought him down on the concrete.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    They seemed to have expected him to give up, but he began to bring his   knees into play as he grappled with them. They tried to hold him down   on the pavement, but Hugo Poole fought silently and patiently, first   separating them, then twisting his torso to jab a heavy elbow into a   face. He heard a crack, a howl of pain, and felt his opponent fall   away. He rolled to the other side to clutch the second assailant, and   delivered a palm strike that bounced the back of the man’s head off the   pavement. The man lay still.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Hugo Poole was up on his feet again, sidestepping away from the two   motionless bodies. The other four had made it only halfway across the   riverbed toward him, and now they stopped with the shallow trench full   of water separating them from Hugo Poole.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Poole put his head down and charged at the one who had spoken earlier.   The young man hesitated, then looked at his companions, who showed no   inclination to help him. They backed away, not from Hugo Poole but from   their companion, as though if they could dissociate themselves from his   fate, they would not share it. As Hugo Poole leapt the trench, the   young man spun on his heel and ran about a hundred feet before he   turned to see if he was safe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The other three interpreted his flight as permission to run too. They   dashed to the far wall where the shadows were deepest, and then moved   off into the darkness down the riverbed. Hugo Poole turned to see that   the two who had been on the ground were rapidly recovering. One was   helping the other to his feet, and then they hobbled off together up   the inclined driveway toward the street.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Hugo Poole stood in the dim concrete riverbed and caught his breath.   The right knee of his pants had a small tear in it; the elbow of his   suit coat felt damp, so he looked at that too. It had a dark splash of   blood on it from the first man’s nose. He sighed: this was turning into   an irritating evening, and it was still early.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Then Hugo Poole saw a new light. It began as a vague impression in his   mind that there must be clouds moving away from the moon. Then the   light brightened and the impression changed. The light was coming from   somewhere down the channel. The wall opposite him began to glow, and   then the light separated into two smaller, more focused circles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    A set of headlights appeared around an elbow bend in the channel and   came toward him. He was aware that it might be a police patrol car, or   the animal control people checking on the coyotes that used the   concrete riverbeds to travel across the city at night. Either way, it   would be best to stay still. It was especially important not to move if   it was Steve Rao.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Hugo Poole stood and watched as the ghostly vehicle drew nearer, its   headlights brightening until it pulled up beside him and stopped. Now   that the headlights were shining past him, he saw that it was a black   Hummer with tinted windows. Someone in the passenger seat used a   powerful flashlight to sweep the walls of the channel and the bushes   and hiding places up above at street level.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The flashlight went out, the passenger door opened, and a large man   with wavy dark hair got out. He wore a lightweight black sport coat and   pants of a color that looked gray in the near darkness. The driver got   out, and Hugo Poole could see that he was wearing a sport coat too.   Almost certainly the coats were intended to hide the bulges of   firearms. The driver stood with his back against the door of the Hummer   and kept guard while the other man approached Hugo Poole.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The man said, “Sir, are you Mr. Poole?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Yes.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Can you put your arms out from your sides for me, please?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Hugo Poole complied, and stood with his feet apart so his legs could be   checked next. He waited, staring into the distance as the man patted   him down expertly, then stepped back. “Thank you very much, sir.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Hugo Poole said, “You’re an off-duty cop, aren’t you?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He didn’t deny it. “I’m a friend of Steve’s.”New York Times bestselling author of Dead Aim and Pursuit [quote] --The New York Times","brand":"Ballantine Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303337316581,"sku":"NP9780345496003","price":8.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345496003.jpg?v=1767733734","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/nightlife-isbn-9780345496003","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}