Stalemate

By Iris Johansen

The suspense begins with a phone call and leads forensic sculptor Eve Duncan onto the harrowing trail of a killer that even the most cold-blooded killers fear to face.

No one leaves this game alive

Her skill in identifying murder victims was worldrenowned, but Eve Duncan worked only for law enforcement and the families of innocent victims. The man on the other end of the phone was anything but law-abiding or innocent. She’d already turned down his offer twice, but the third time it comes with a grisly warning. Forced to accept, Eve will leave everything and everyone she loves to travel alone to the luxurious armed compound of one of the world’s most wanted criminals to identify a skull he’s recovered. She’s agreed to this devil’s bargain to save an innocent family, but also for a reason she can’t admit to the police, to the CIA, to anyone. For the man in the Colombian jungle promises Eve what she wants most of all—the key to solving the most painful mystery of her past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Dec 26, 2006
• ISBN: 9780553903331

Iris Johansen

Iris Johansen is the New York Times bestselling author of Chasing the Night, Blood Game, Eve, and Eight Days to Live, among others. She began writing after her children left home for college, and first achieved success in the early 1980s writing category romances. In 1991, she began writing suspense historical romance novels, and in 1996 she turned to crime fiction, with which she has had great success. She lives near Atlanta, Georgia.

Reviews for Stalemate

[meggyweg · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Despite the sensational title and cover, this book, written by an FBI profiler, is actually fairly subdued in tone. It covers the famous, unresolved rash of abductions in the San Francisco bay area in the 1980s and 1990s and the prime suspect, a sewage worker named Timothy Bindner. Bindner has never been charged with anything relating to the missing girls, but he has never been ruled out a suspect either. Tantalizing circumstances link him to the girls, and he is definitely a pedophile in the very least, but there is not a single shred of hard evidence implicating him in any kidnappings or even any child molestations.Philpin interviewed Bindner extensively and presents a good portrait of the man's pathology. I don't know if he's actually mentally ill, but he's certainly a very strange individual. I admired the author's objectivity; Philpin never said whether he believed Bindner to be complicit or not, but simply put the facts down and let the reader decide. Stalemate kind of peters out at the end, but mostly this is not the fault of the author and is simply the result of having no real-life conclusion to make: none of the missing girls have been found and no arrests have been made.

[shannon.dolgos · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Eve is contacted by Montalvo, a dangerous man out of Colombia, to do a reconstruction. At first, she refuses. But when he offers to help her find Bonnie...that changes things. Under the guise of protecting Joe, she leaves after he has gone to work, hoping that her moment of deceit doesn't undo their relationship.

And, on a fairly predictable note, Joe and Galen come to rescue Eve from herself. Upon meeting Joe and Galen in the jungle to talk it out, she and Joe are shot and wounded. Joe manages to knock her down at Galen's warning. Joe gets the brunt of the hit.

In pain and infuriated, Joe is now motivated by revenge to get Diaz, the man behind the hit, before he can hurt Eve. Eve is pushing to get the reconstruction done before Joe heals enough to after Diaz. Will they get out alive? Is this the end for Eve and Joe? Has Eve fallen for Montalvo?

This is one of the better titles with a few more twists and turns despite some of the obvious predictability.

[nancychase · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I got a Great Story and a Good dose of Forensic Science!My good friend told me about this book, since she knew I got "hooked" on the field of forensic medicine after watching a certain tv show. Tv is fine, but for me nothing is better than a good novel that can weave a story around a subject that I'm interested in. Anyway I thought "Stalemate" was a fantastic novel and the forensic professor Eve Duncan was just the character I was looking for to keep me hooked on the field of forensic science. I was thrilled with the author's detailed descriptions of this field and way she just pulled me into this fascinating story. In summary, I really enjoyed Iris Johansen book.

[jlouise77_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Awesome book! I couldn't put it down. Of course, I love all the books in this series, but this one in particular was fantastic. There were some really unexpected turns and twists in this one regarding Eve's story line and I am really excited to know that she is getting close to solving her mystery and that makes me want to get started on her next book!

[sunnysd_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Eve is no closer to locating Bonnie than ever, and her missing daughter continues to haunt her. When a South American arms dealer offers her a dangerous bargain - identify a skull for him and he'll track down Bonnie's killer for her - she can't resist the lure. But Eve has more hostages to fate than her lost daughter. This time her obsession with bringing Bonnie home may just cost her the life of someone close to her.It's been a while since I read the preceding novels, but Johansen deftly handles backstory details, and the story takes off fairly quickly. That said, while the tension continues to build, there isn't a great amount of action. The supporting characters are wooden and fairly one-dimensional, and the premise is a bit of a stretch. Eve's tendency to threaten violence toward anyone who endangers her loved ones gets a bit tired by the third or fourth repetition. It's a solid enough series entry, but Johansen's capable of better.

[jrlibrary · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not for children. Eve Duncan is contacted by a criminal, Montalvo, who offers to help her find Bonnie's killer IF she does a reconstruction for him. Against Joe Quinn's wishes she goes to Montalvo's compound and becomes embroiled in a battle between two master criminals. I really like this series. The next one is called Quicksand and is due out March 2008.

[rage0chan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I love Stalemate, for some reason. The story is, as with most other Iris Johansen novels, quick and easy to read, with little to no complex, mind-bending, devious plots. That's not to say it's not interesting, however. Be prepared for some action, a bit of romance, and plenty of thrill.

[kd9_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I can understand why this is considered a thriller, but it is much more accurate considered as a romance. Here you have a brilliant, sexy, passionate, dysfunctional forensic reconstructionist partnered with a macho, sexy policeman, but sought out by a macho, brilliant, sexy South American arms dealer. Much of the plot is predictable. The arms dealer seems the epitome of evil, so create an even more evil drug dealer and have that drug dealer kill the arms dealer's wife (a daughter of a freedom fighting army general). Have the sexy arms dealer give up his evil ways and follow the heroine back to the United States and you even have a plot that will span many more books. If I actually liked romances this might not be bad, but in the end it is simply too rote and unbelievable.