The Kill: A Novel

By Allison Brennan

Her worst nightmare brought back to life, she risks everything for a second shot at justice.

For thirty years, FBI scientist Olivia St. Martin has lived with guilt and one abiding certainty–that while she wasn’t able to save her sister’s life, she did testify and helped to convict the rapist and killer. When shocking new evidence exonerates the man Olivia is sure she saw abduct her sister, she breaks every rule in the book to uncover the truth.

Driven by the possibility that she put the wrong man behind bars, Olivia discovers that a serial killer has been at large all these years. Believing that the monster has just struck again in Seattle, Olivia leaves her lab and poses as a field agent, sharing her unofficial investigation with a hardworking Seattle cop. Olivia doesn’t want to lie to detective Zack Travis. And she certainly doesn’t want to fall in love. But as the investigation intensifies, Olivia and Zack find that they’re rapidly losing control–over their hearts, their secrets, and a case that threatens to consume them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Feb 28, 2006
• ISBN: 9780345490759

Allison Brennan

ALLISON BRENNAN is the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of over forty-five novels. She has been nominated for Best Paperback Original Thriller by International Thriller Writers and the Daphne du Maurier Award. A former consultant in the California State Legislature, Allison lives in Arizona with her husband, five kids and assorted pets.

Reviews for The Kill

[dreesie-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Taking place during the second empire, The Kill chronicles the over-the-top lifestyle of Aristide Saccard (was Rougon), his wife Renee, and his son Maxime (approx 8 yrs younger than his stepmother).

Aristide has made his fortune with a touch of help from his brother the minister, who came to Paris from Plassans first. But does he really have a fortune? He has a beautiful wife (as a widower, he jumped at the "dowry" he received by marrying a girl in trouble). That dowry set him on his path of speculation as Paris' large boulevards were built. Inside knowledge, tricky schemes, and no aversion to risk get him a huge home, custom clothing, drinking lovers and parties parties and more parties. But he is constantly on the edge.

Are they happy? Satisfied? Can they stay afloat or will it their own empire crash and burn around them?

[arubabookwoman · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've read several of Zola's well-known classics, some of which constitute part of his 20 volume Rougon-Macquart series. Each novel in the series is stand-alone, and they do not have to be read chronologically. However, I decided to read/reread the entire series in order. I read the first volume last December and found it only so so. The Kill is the second volume in the series, and it is magnificent.The Kill (La Curee in French, which means something like 'the division of the spoils') focuses on Aristide Rougon, although his brother Eugene and sister Sidonie play prominent roles as well. Aristide has assumed the surname of his first wife, Saccard, and has come to Paris to make his fortune. Through his brother, he obtains a bureaucratic position as the assistant surveyor of roads for Paris. While initially disheartened by his nominal salary, he soon realizes that his position could enable him to make a fortune in real estate, as the boulevards and throughfares of Paris are just being platted and the property through which they will run is being acquired by the city at grossly inflated prices. However, he can't use his insider information, because he has no capital to invest.This problem is solved when he is offered the opportunity to marry a rich heiress (she is 'damaged goods'), even as his first wife is still on her deathbed. The Kill chronicles the rise and fall of Aristide as an unscrupulous, dishonest real estate wheeler dealer with his second wife Renee, an extravagant, selfish socialite. They flaunt their wealth in their obscenely opulent mansion, Renee's exquisite wardrobe (300,000 F dressmaker bills are not uncommon) and the lavish galas they host. Still, Renee is bored, and seeks something more to make her feel alive. She begins a love affair with her stepson, Aristide's son from his first marriage.This book ran afoul of the censors when it began appearing in serial form in 1871, for its outrage to 'public morals' and 'gross materialism.' Today, I think it is particularly relevant as we continue to feel the after-effects of our own real estate bubble and rampant over-consumption. Although not as comprehensive and wide-ranging as some of Zola's other books, this is also a great one.

[slickdpdx · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A trashy story masterfully told.

[therebelprince · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Sin ought to be an exquisite thing, my dear."

A scathing indictment of Paris during the rise of the Second Empire, Zola here centres his novel around a man driven by power and a woman driven by insatiable desires with a refusal to self-analyse (shades of His Excellency Eugene Rougon). The gorgeous descriptions, running multiple pages at a time, of palatial estates springing up across the city create a banquet so rich it spoils. Zola consciously overwhelms our senses as he examines how the twinned greed of Saccard and Renee exemplifies the grotesque abundance that characterised this era. (Strange, in a way, to imagine him writing this in the period immediately following the Empire.)

As usual with Zola, symbolism is rich and plentiful. The houses are decorated in images of life: fruit and flowers and plants, but which are made of stone, images only of the nature from which they are removed. (At book's end, one character will weep "at not having listened to the voices of the trees".) The "kill" referred to in the novel's title is that which is killed by dogs during a hunt. For each of the main characters, there is a desire to claim that kill - whether it be pleasure, power, money, or something else entirely - but such a goal requires a great sacrifice of one's self.

Zola's obsession with the idea that characteristics and traits are passed down perhaps becomes a bit of a distraction during this novel, especially with the son Maxime who displays worrying (read: bisexual or at least epicene) traits which one feels that the author disdains. And his evident desire to write a novel of the moment, one set in a world with which contemporary readers were familiar, means this novel stretches the brain a little more than, say, The Fortune of the Rougons where only a few footnotes are required to assist with the powerful atmosphere. Here, one gets the sense that the supporting characters are all strongly recognisable types or even direct references - roman a clef - that do not resonate 150 years on.

But that's the dismissive part out of the way. This is an engaging chapter in the ongoing Rougon-Macquart series. The best part is that there was plenty of symbolism even without the author. The boulevards that went up and the complete reconstruction of Paris under the Second Empire were directly political acts. (In Zola, perhaps everything is political.) As Brian Nelson notes in his excellent introduction for the recent Oxford World's Classics edition, they were acts of power - ripping through districts of the poor or disenfranchised, and creating easy avenues for troops to be deployed in the event of an uprising. They were also very much acts of capitalism, both in the way the rich fattened themselves on the spoils, and also in the Paris they created, so much better prepared for the age of "gold and flesh" Zola reflects upon.

Fun fun.

[cindywho-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Lovely descriptions of the excesses of the nouveau riche in 19th century Paris.

[thorold_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The second book in the cycle takes us to Paris, and focusses on Pierre Rougon's son Aristide, whom we last saw in Plassans, backtracking rapidly from his stance as a radical journalist when he realised that he was backing the losing side. He's now in Paris, corruptly exploiting a job as a city official in order to make a fortune in property deals off the back of Haussmann's grand demolition and reconstruction project. He's changed his name to Saccard, and has a glamorous new wife, Renée, who is only seven years older than his son from his first marriage, Maxime.All of which, of course, gives Zola the perfect opportunity to cast Renée as an ironic Second-Empire version of the most famous heroine in French classical drama, Phédre, making her fall desperately and self-destructively in love with her own stepson. And where else could the big sex-scene take place in a Zola novel than under a bearskin in a tropical greenhouse containing at least five pages worth of exotic plants of a sexually suggestive nature? The greenhouse in question is attached to Aristide's glamorous millionaire-villa, which is - of course - illegally built on the edge of the Parc Monceau (one of the private parks bought for the city and rebuilt by Haussmann). Zola's point in this frantic and complex story of financial and sexual corruption, as flagged by the hunting reference in the title, seems to be to show us that most of his characters are chasing sex or money not so much in order to get it, but mostly for the excitement of the chase. If a plot fails, tant pis - something else will come along. The people who take sex seriously, like Renée, get hurt; the people who take money seriously get boringly rich and fade out of the social circuit. Aristide is an extreme example of the "hunter", who keeps a mistress only because that goes with his self-adopted role as the daring financial wizard: they meet to have a laugh together about her other suitors, and after a decent interval he sells her on to someone else. His financial deals are so elegant, crooked and complicated that he doesn't actually seem to make any money out of them for himself when they succeed. They extend his reputation as a good credit risk, and that's all that matters. There are a lot of glorious set-piece scenes in the book, especially the grand climax of the story at Aristide's costume-ball, where Zola sets up a scene of positively operatic opulence and complexity, with different groups of characters moving in and out of the spotlight, and dancers, music, plants (again!) and tableaux-vivant all working the symbolism like there's no tomorrow. In among the general depravity there's a surprising amount of LGBT interest - mostly unfavourable and designed to reinforce our idea of how very corrupt this world is. Maxime is at least gender-uncertain and likes to be treated as one of the girls and talk hair and fashion with them; there's a couple of aristocratic friends of Renée who are widely rumoured to be more interested in each other than in their husbands; there's a valet-de-chambre who likes to have his wicked way with the grooms and coachmen, etc., etc. All a lot more explicit than the things that Trollope sometimes hints at!

[smiler69 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The second book of Zola's Rougon-Macquart series deals with Aristide Rougon's vertiginous rise to wealth and prestige during the 1860s. Aristide, the son of Pierre Rougon and his wife Félicité was introduced in the first novel as a bumbling journalist intent on siding with the doomed cause of the republicans until the very last moment, when he realized that he'd been supporting the wrong camp and quickly switched allegiances, just as the Emperor Napoleon III came into power. Here, with his wife and one of two children, he leaves behind his young son Maxime in Plassans with the boy's grandparents and move to Paris to seek his fortune, where he expects to be helped by his brother Eugène Rougon, who, having played an important role in the Emperor's rise to power, has become a prominent figure in politics. Eugène is willing to help him secure a small job working for the city on the condition that Aristide change his family name to avoid any connection to himself, should the latter be involved in a scandal.Paris is just about to embark on important reconstruction work, building the great boulevards planned by Baron Haussmann, and the newly re-named Aristide Saccard, having obtained valuable information through his work, feels confident he can make his fortune by prospecting on real-estate. The only thing he lacks is capital, and when his wife falls gravely ill, an opportunity arises which he cannot pass up, and as his wife lays dying, agrees to wed a young woman for the huge dowry her family is willing to put up to prevent as scandal. Shortly after marrying Renée, he sends for his son Maxime to join them in their luxurious Parisian mansion, since in no time at all, Saccard has become one of the city's wealthiest men. The novel's main protagonist is young Renée, celebrated in Paris society for her great beauty, her scandalous affairs, and her priceless and highly original fashions. As the Second Empire sinks into increasing decadence, we see Renée seeking greater and greater thrills, until she ultimately begins a torrid semi-incestuous affair with her dissolute stepson Maxime, which will ultimately prove her undoing. Filled with descriptions of sickening wealth and luxury of the worst nouveau riche variety, and peopled with a cast of characters behaving very badly indeed, this great work of literature felt like a guilty pleasure and was hard to put down.

[poquette_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Kill is the second novel in Zola’s twenty-volume Rougon-Macquart cycle, which is essentially a family saga that follows three branches of the Rougon-Macquarts through the period of France’s Second Empire beginning with the coup d’état of Napoleon III in 1852 and ending with collapse of the empire during the Franco-Prussian War 1870-71. As an introduction to the series, The Kill is not a bad place to start — and perhaps finish — because Zola’s literary and sociological preoccupations are fully revealed. This novel, which stands perfectly well on its own, will tell the reader whether he or she wants to invest in any or all of the other books.If the history of Paris — in particular the Haussmann era — has particular appeal for the reader, The Kill will certainly whet the appetite for more. The massive redevelopment scheme launched by Napoleon III and his director of public works Baron Haussmann was carried out in an atmosphere of corruption and decadence. If Zola’s version of events is to be believed, everyone from the Emperor down to the lowliest lackey was morally corrupt and sexually perverted. No one rises from the pages of this novel unscathed.Zola was a realist in the tradition of Balzac and Flaubert. To illustrate his characteristic brand of realism, a particularly torrid love scene takes place in a palatial hothouse, and Zola uses the occasion to intertwine his description of the scene with a voluptuous exposition of the plants and foliage: The night of passion they spent there was followed by many others. The houthouse loved and burned with them. In the heavy atmosphere, in the pale light of the moon, they saw the strange world of plants moving confusedly around them, exchanging embraces. The black bearskin stretched across the pathway. At their feet the tank steamed, full of a thick tangle of plants, while the pink petals of the water-lilies opened out on the surface, like virgin bodices, and the tornelias let their bushy tendrils hang down like the hair of swooning water-nymphs. Around them the palm trees and the tall Indian bamboos rose up towards the domed roof where they bent over and mingled their leaves with the postures of exhausted lovers. Lower down the ferns, the pterides, and the alsophilas were like green ladies, with wide skirts trimmed with symmetrical flounces, standing mute and motionless at the edge of the pathway, waiting for some romantic encounter. By their side the twisted red-streaked leaves of the begonias and the white, spear-headed leaves of the caladiums provided a vague series of bruises and pallors, which the lovers could not understand, though at times they discerned curves as of hips and knees, prone on the ground beneath the brutality of blood-stained kisses. The banana trees, bending under the weight of their fruit, spoke to them of the rich fecundity of the earth, while the Abyssinian euphorbias, whose prickly deformed stems, covered with loathsome excrescences, they glimpsed in the shadows, seemed to exude sap, the overflowing flux of this fiery gestation. . . . And it goes on.Regarding the plot, it concerns itself with three protagonists: a man, soon to be widowed, who is involved in shady dealings to make money off the Haussmann redevelopment scheme using insider information gleaned from his job at city hall, i.e., the Hôtel de Ville; his second wife who was already pregnant but he married her for her dowry which provided capital to launch his various schemes; and his effete son by the first wife, who is morally and intellectually weak and pliable and thus capable of total moral degradation.As depicted by Zola, the frenetic pursuit of money and sexual pleasure by all of society seems over the top. “Sin ought to be an exquisite thing, my dear.” Despite the literary merits of Zola’s writing, I am not sure I want to wallow through nineteen more volumes of despicable characters in an atmosphere of total corruption. Surely Zola could have found someone admirable to depict in all of this. I believe his point was partly to marvel at the fact that so much was accomplished in a relatively short period of time in such a morally bankrupt atmosphere. And I agree, that is indeed something to marvel at.