HeartSick: Chelsea Cain
By: Angela Longstreet | 09.03.07 | 
Detective Archie Sheridan can't forget the woman who kidnapped him.
For ten days, she tortured him to the brink of death, then mysteriously set him free and turned herself in.
Now two years later, he's addicted to pain pills, estranged from his family, and obsessed with her.
Gretchen Lowell. She's beautiful. She's brilliant. She's a killer.
And she still controls Archie -- even from behind bars.
As Archie trails a new case, he needs Gretchen now in more ways than one -- to catch a killer and to release his soul.
There are few things out there in the morbid world that will make me cringe much less allow me to enjoy that aspect of the primal human nature. I found myself grinning in pure sadistic pleasure upon each turn of the page. This was truly the right mesh of terrible romance -hearts and minds ripped apart piece by piece, twisted, spiced with a pinch of lust and then shoved together in a blender before being simply thrust into the husk that was the detective Archie - here we have the beginning of this glorious novel.
The author gives us a painful beginning chapter which only serves to whet my appetite for more but alas, more does not come for several more chapters; it is truly work the wait however. The main story is not of those horrific ten days that Ms. Gretchen spent torturing the poor detective, but of the new and improved serial killer. A reporter is hired to follow around the detective, her BIG break out of the factoid section of the Herald. She uses him, he uses her and in turn they attempt to use the mastermind of Ms. Gretchen which of course only backfires into more tears on the printed page.
The sarcastic wit of the reporter, Susan Ward, touched with a bit of pink dye to her hair only adds to the hilarious dialogue that she gives to those she interviews. It seems as if she just knows exactly what to say to get her way except in the presence of the detective to which they seem to be toying back and forth with one another, he giving up something in return for something from her, a truly adorable yet frustrating transition for both. She is in the process of doing other detective work for her other store while attempting to juggle this interview of Archie Sheridan in between looking at her first decomposed corpse and trying to screw her way through the glass ceiling.
A mixture of the dreaded past of the detective, the reporter, the killer and who knows who else meshes together. Just as we think we figure out who the serial killer is we find them dead by suicide, or is it murder? I will admit that I had the real killer as choice number two but Ms. Cain did throw even my detective skills for a loop.
HeartSick needs to come with one of those warning labels that tells people on how truly horrific the tale is. However, as morbid as I am, I think that she could have expanded more upon it though I am by no means complaining. I have placed Chelsea Cain on my watch list and wait impatiently for more of her truly glorious and sick works. My heart bleeds for Ms. Gretchen; I too am under her spell.
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Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur (September 4, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312368461
ISBN-13: 978-0312368463
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