REVIEW: ‘Sweetheart’ by Chelsea Cain

Sweet­heart (2008) by Chelsea Cain is the sequel to last years, New York Times best­seller, Heart­sick. The story is told in third per­son present tense and is set in Port­land, Oregon.

The story takes place two months after the events of the last book.

Detec­tives Archie Sheri­dan and his part­ner, Henry Sobol are inves­ti­gat­ing a Jane Doe found in For­est Park. They also dis­cover a cou­ple of bod­ies found in the Beauty Killer’s old stump­ing ground, too.

Along­side that story arc, Susan Ward, the jour­nal­ist for the Her­ald, who wrote those arti­cles about Archie while he was inves­ti­gat­ing the After School Stran­gler case, is con­tin­u­ing her story involv­ing a high rank­ing pub­lic offi­cial that promises to be a huge scan­dal for the city of Portland.

To briefly recap, dam­aged cop, Archie Sheri­dan was the Beauty Killer aka Gretchen Lowell’s last vic­tim. She infil­trated his task force to get to him and tor­tured him in her base­ment. With­out expla­na­tion, Gretchen lets him go, while he barely clings to life and she turns her­self in to the authorities.

Gretchen is now serv­ing a life sen­tence in the state pen and has a plea deal with the state to help close some 31 open homi­cide cases. Archie’s vis­its to Gretchen every Sun­day destroyed his mar­riage and strained the work­ing rela­tion­ship of his col­leagues. Many couldn’t under­stand their rela­tion­ship or why Archie felt some­how com­forted in her presence.

Since the last book, how­ever, Archie has moved back in with his ex-wife Deb­bie and their two chil­dren and he is see­ing a shrink. He still takes his meds to keep up appear­ances. He’s also dis­con­tin­ued his Sun­day vis­its with Gretchen, how­ever images of her still haunt him.

The dynam­ics of Archie and Gretchen’s rela­tion­ship is still at the heart of this series. In this entry, read­ers will learn how Gretchen and Archie’s rela­tion­ship began. I can’t say that I was com­pletely sur­prised at the devel­op­ments in this story. I’m sure some of you had already seen what was com­ing. I mean, the title is apropos.

Susan Ward’s tenac­ity in see­ing her story get pub­lished in the Her­ald makes her a tar­get of peo­ple who have a lot to loose polit­i­cally and that was an inter­est­ing thread to fol­low to it’s pre­dictable end­ing. She also works with Archie again and helps him solve his Jane Doe murders.

The other thread that revolved around Gretchen and her manip­u­lat­ing the prison sys­tem leads to an all out man­hunt, which pro­vided for an increase in ten­sion and sus­pense, which I liked. Also, the events that fol­low next, say that last 1/4 of the book, will have read­ers talking.

I pre­fer mys­ter­ies to have more sub­stan­tive plot­ting than what was in here and with a vil­lain who has more depth. There is an attempt to give read­ers an expla­na­tion or motive behind Gretchen being this cold-blooded killer. Don’t be sur­prised at what you may discover.

I also liked that we got to fol­low Susan into the news room and see her do her job. Espe­cially since the source for her expose, Molly Palmer, is not return­ing her phone calls. Her edi­tor threat­ens to sit on the story unless they speak to her but an unex­pected event almost knocks it off the table completely.

Sweet­heart has great pac­ing and has an assem­bled cast of char­ac­ters to help keep the pages turn­ing. There are a cou­ple of new char­ac­ters who had sup­port­ive roles namely Bliss, Susan’s mother, who is a col­or­ful char­ac­ter. There is also the return of graphic vio­lence that seems to be a hall­mark of this series. The dénoue­ment was rather inter­est­ing in that it left me with a dif­fer­ent view of Archie.

Upon fin­ish­ing Sweet­heart, I find that these two books so far in this series are very quick reads. There isn’t very much to chal­lenge the reader here and that’s not nec­es­sar­ily a bad thing. Despite my minor com­plaints, I still enjoyed Sweet­heart for what it was: a page-turning thriller. My grade, B.

Sweet­heart is avail­able now in hard­cover at your favorite bookstore.