.com Review

Jan Burke's stories about a vulnerable and resourceful reporter at a Southern California newspaper called Las Piernas News Express all feature tense and thoughtful plots, writing that manages to be sharp and sardonic without calling attention to itself, and a dead honest picture of the world of small-market newspaper journalism. Her latest is no exception. When Kelly's homicide detective husband, Frank Harriman, gets a heroic write-up in her paper after arresting the apparent leader of a gang of murderous troublemakers that call themselves Hocus (in the sense of hoax, rather than magic), everybody at the paper and almost everybody at the cop shop thinks she's behind it. So when Frank disappears, and his blood is discovered in the trunk of his car, Irene doesn't get much help from the paper or the police. She has to track down the real secret of Hocus largely on her own--which she does in the completely credible and exciting manner we've come to expect. Burke's last book about about Kelly, Remember Me, Irene, is out in paperback, joining Dear Irene, Goodnight, Irene, and Sweet Dreams, Irene.

From Publishers Weekly

In Sweet Dreams, Irene (1994), Southern California newspaper reporter Irene Kelly was abducted while pursuing a story. Burke again examines the pain suffered by kidnapping victims as Irene's police detective husband, Frank Harriman, is taken by Hocus, a terrorist group. The "takers," as hostage negotiator Thomas Cassidy calls them, are Bret Neukirk and Samuel Ryan. Twelve years earlier, when they were 10, they were kidnapped with?and witnessed the murders of?their fathers. Frank was the policeman who rescued and befriended them in the aftermath, when the boys suffered elective mutism?refusal to talk except to each other. They never revealed that a tall, white-haired cop assisted their kidnapper, Chris Powell, who was murdered shortly afterwards. Now Bret and Sam seek well-planned revenge by keeping Frank sedated on morphine until Irene goes to Bakersfield, where their fathers were killed, and discovers Powell's accomplice. Her investigation leads to three close friends of Frank's late father, who was also a policeman. Switching between past and present, Burke writes a well-paced mystery with a heartrending climax, but her strength is the sympathy and depth with which she describes how the trauma of abduction haunts the victims. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

YA. A group calling themselves "Hocus" has played numerous pranks on the community of Riverside. Voiding all library fines was a prank actually applauded by many, but the gang turns to violence as two of its leaders set out to avenge the murders of their fathers many years before. To that end, they kidnap a police officer?the very one who was the hero at the scene of their fathers' deaths. Frank Harriman is that man and husband of super sleuth/reporter Irene Kelly. It becomes her job to unravel the long-ago homicides, find the killer, and save Frank before he becomes an expendable hostage. This most unusual mystery will keep YAs riveted and create new fans for the series.?Katherine Fitch, Lake Braddock Middle School, Burke, VA
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The latest Irene Kelly mystery places reporter Irene's husband in jeopardy. The homicide detective goes missing after busting a junkie, presumably held hostage by persons unknown. Crisp, crackling prose and immediate suspense. A sure winner.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Burke's Irene Kelly series seems to be on the verge of a breakout to bestsellerdom. This time, reporter Kelly finds her policeman husband, Frank, at the center of a fast-breaking story. After meeting with an informant, Frank is kidnapped by Hocus, a group of political anarchists who began with pranks but have escalated to murder. At first, the cops figure Hocus wants to exchange Frank for two of their jailed members, but what the group has in mind is far more chilling. Years earlier, Frank was first on the scene at a double murder and found the victims, along with two young boys who survived. Now his good deed comes back to haunt him, and only Irene can unlock the terrible secret that will free Frank and release his kidnappers from their dark past. Burke's plot is jam-packed with unrelenting suspense, and there's plenty of texture, too, what with a charismatic cast of characters and some decidedly unusual psychological overtones. Top-notch reading and just maybe the one that introduces Burke to a mainstream, beyond-genre audience. Emily Melton

From Kirkus Reviews

The pranks of a group of misfits calling themselves Hocus--they've tapped into computer systems and given the citizens of Las Piernas, California, amnesty from parking tickets and library fines--begin to escalate when they free scores of dogs and cats from an animal shelter and kill the keeper. They then clean up a blighted ghetto block by torching the buildings and the drug dealers squatting there, and finally kidnap Det. Frank Harriman from a meeting with an informant they leave dead. Their plan, as they tell it to Frank's wife, reporter Irene Kelly, and hostage negotiator Tom Cassidy, is to use Frank, who rescued two particularly dangerous Hocus-ers from another deadly kidnapping when they were only children, as a lever to get Irene to identify the Bakersfield cop who was an accomplice in their fathers' murders. So like Peter Lovesey's Edgar-winning The Summons (1995), Burke's fifth (Remember Me, Irene, 1996, etc.) is a detective story sparked by the hostage threat. But Burke leaves so many loose ends (those earlier Hocus pranks, the conspirators already in jail, a curious episode involving Frank's dead sister) and weighs her story down with so many flashbacks and crosscuts to Frank in the kidnappers' hands that it's hard to focus on Irene's ordeal--even if you believe the author's capable of killing off her heroine's husband. The result has its high points--the wary friendship that grows between Irene and Cassidy, echoed by the unexpected tenderness between Frank and one of his abductors--but is likely to leave your manicure intact. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From the Publisher

Rising star Jan Burke -- whom reviewers have consistently compared to Patricia Cornwell, Sue Grafton, and Robert Parker -- pulls out all the stops in her most powerful work to date.

In this thunderously paced heart stopper, intrepid sleuth/reporter Irene Kelly is put to the test when her detective husband is taken hostage.

Tension mounts from the first pages when Irene's detective husband, Frank Harriman, turns up missing, a bloodstain is found in the trunk of his car, and an ominous warning is left on the rearview mirror suggesting he's been kidnapped.

Burke never lets up the pressure, skillfully raising the suspense to a rolling boil by the end of this wild and exciting ride.

Hocus delivers the same intricate plotting, clever dialogue, and gobbledown prose readers have come to expect from Jan Burke, but she now exceeds already high expectations in her strongest book yet.