Forensic expert "Cat" Ferry has a stellar reputation until a panic attack paralyzes her at a New Orleans murder scene. Praying the attack is a one-time event, she continues working, but when the same killer strikes again -- raising fears that a serial killer is at large -- Cat blacks out over the victim's mutilated corpse. Suspended from the FBI task force, Cat returns to her hometown of Natchez, Mississippi, to regroup. Though her colleagues know her as a world-class forensic odontologist, Cat lives a secret life. Plagued by nightmares, and deeply involved with a married homicide detective, Cat holds herself together with iron nerves and alcohol, using her work as a substitute for life. But her family's secluded antebellum estate provides no sanctuary. When some of Cat's forensic chemicals are spilled in her childhood bedroom, two bloody footprints are revealed. This discovery sets in motion a quest to piece together Cat's past -- buried memories that could tie her father's murder to the grisly deaths occurring in New Orleans in the present. For only by finding this remorseless killer can Cat save her sanity -- and her life. In his ninth book, Iles returns to the Deep South, an old Natchez mansion to be exact, where 31-year-old Catherine Ferry, a forensic specialist, retreats after panic attacks interfere with her work on what appears to be a string of serial killings. No sooner does she arrive than she discovers that the facts of her privileged if troubled youth in the house, where black servants still cater to the whims of Cat's racist, iron-willed grandfather, are an elaborate fiction. In her quest for the truth, especially about the brutal death of her father, she opens the door to a disturbing family history that puts her at both physical and emotional risk--and, eventually, leads her to the doorstep of an unusual serial killer. Iles' dialogue leaves something to be desired this time around ("I have to keep digging until I uncover the truth. If I don't, I'll go mad"), and a heavy dose of melodrama (Cat, a longtime alcoholic with bipolar disease, goes cold turkey when she discovers she's pregnant) gets in the way of the mystery. Still, this provocative tale of twisted lives and dark, agonizing secrets delivers enough atmospheric suspense to keep Iles' many fans entertained till the last page. Stephanie Zvirin Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Blood Memory By Greg Iles Scribner Book Company Copyright © 2005 Greg Iles All right reserved. ISBN: 0743234707 Chapter One When does murder begin? With the pull of a trigger? With the formation of a motive? Or does it begin long before, when a child swallows more pain than love and is forever changed? Perhaps it doesn't matter. Or perhaps it matters more than everything else. We judge and punish based on facts, but facts are not truth. Facts are like a buried skeleton uncovered long after death. Truth is fluid. Truth is alive. To know the truth requires understanding, the most difficult human art. It requires seeing all things at once, forward and backward, the way God sees. Forward and backward... So we begin in the middle, with a telephone ringing in a dark bedroom on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans, Louisiana. There's a woman lying on the bed, mouth open in the mindless gape of sleep. She seems not to hear the phone. Then suddenly the harsh ring breaks through, like defibrillator paddles shocking a comatose patient. The woman's hand shoots from beneath the covers, groping for the phone, not finding it. She gasps and rises onto one elbow. Then she groans and picks up the receiver from the bedside table. The woman is me. "Dr. Ferry," I croak. "Are you sleeping?" The voice is male, taut with anger. "No." My denial is automatic, but my mouth is dry as a cotton ball, and my alarm clock reads 8:20 P.M. I've been out for nine hours. The first decent sleep I've had in days. "He hit another one." Something sparks in my drowsy brain. "What?" "This is the fourth time I've called in the past half hour, Cat." The voice brings up a well of anger, longing, and guilt. It belongs to the detective I've been sleeping with for the past eighteen months. Sean Regan. An insightful, fascinating man with a wife and three kids. "What did you say before?" I ask, ready to bite off Sean's head if he asks me to meet him somewhere. "I said, he hit another one." I blink and try to orient myself in the darkness. It's early August, and the purple glow of dusk filters through my curtains. God, my mouth is dry. "Where?" "The Garden District. Owner of a printing company. Male Caucasian." "Bite marks?" "Worse than the others." "How old was he?" "Sixty-nine." "Jesus. It is him." I'm already getting out of bed. "This makes no sense at all." "Nope." "Sexual predators kill women, Sean. Or children. Not old men." "We've had this conversation. How fast can you get here? Piazza's hove