Monday With Kaye: “Unthinkable” by Clyde Phillips (Reviewed by Kaye George)

Kaye George is back this week with a review of Unthinkable by Clyde Phillips. If you are anything like me, and I am very sorry for that, you will want to start this series at the beginning. That would be the 1998 release Fall From Grace.

“Unthinkable” by Clyde Phillips

This is the long-awaited fourth in the Jane Caniotti/Kenny Marks police procedural series. Jane has been told to take it easy on the job, since she’s pregnant with the couple’s first child, but you know how that will go for a hard-charging officer.

As the story opens, people are dying one after another—our clue that this is a serial killer case. Each person is seen in connection with Stella’s, a San Francisco deli, either entering the restaurant or working there. There don’t seem to be connections between most of them, which makes the case a real puzzler. One victim, however, has a connection to the police department, a young man who is the nephew of one of the police officers who was first on the scene.

Jane is not only pregnant, but she’s forty years old, which puts her at even more risk. She can’t back down on this case, though. Tenuous connections between the dead are explored and lead to dead ends, time after time, until the break comes and leads to the thrilling conclusion.

The mystery is a worthy addition to this series by the former executive producer of the television series, Dexter.

Reviewed by Kaye George, author of  Death in the Time of Ice for Suspense Magazine