Product Description

Five CDs, 6 hours
Performance by Carolyn McCormick

Iris Johansen brings back Sarah Patrick from The New York Times bestseller The Killing Game in a new novel that draws her inexorably into the path of a killer bent on revenge.

Sarah Patrick has a gift for finding what no one else can, whether it's a missing child, the survivor of a collapsed building, or the long-buried skeleton of a murder victim.  Working search and rescue with Monty, her golden retriever, as part of the ATF K-9 unit, she's earned a reputation as the best when a recovery seems impossible.

Billionaire John Logan needs the best.  Sarah and Monty are his only shot at locating a kidnapped scientist, and he doesn't hesitate to pull strings in Washington to get them.  Sarah wants guarantees-safety for herself and Monty, and Logan's help in freeing her from a blackmailer's demands.  Once she takes on the perilous assignment, though, even Logan's power may not be enough to shield her.  Because the killer is watching, waiting and devising a chillingly perfect vengeance.

Product Details

• Published on: 2000-06-27
• Released on: 2000-06-27
• Formats: Abridged, Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Binding: Audio CD

From Amazon.com
Search-and-rescue worker Sarah Patrick and Monty, her talented golden retriever, take center stage in this deft, suspenseful outing. The immensely appealing heroine was introduced as a secondary character in Iris Johansen's previous thriller The Killing Game. Back, too, is John Logan from Face of Deception, the charismatic billionaire whose very personal vendetta against a stop-at-nothing killer pulls Sarah into a high-stakes game of search and destroy.

When Logan's top-secret research station in South America is attacked and his chief scientist kidnapped, Sarah and Monty manage to track the hostage through the jungle and save his life. But that's only the beginning in what turns out to be a series of sadistic and deadly attempts to destroy Logan. Despite Sarah's initial distrust, she comes to respect and ultimately love Logan--which makes her and Monty targets for the killer's vengeance, too. The action moves swiftly across the globe, from the American Southwest to Colombia to Taiwan, and finally to North Dakota, in a tense, dramatic denouement. Johansen manages to explicate her characters' back-stories and illuminate their motivation as she moves the action forward with skillful pacing. Fans of the author's previous suspense thrillers featuring forensic sculptor Eve Duncan won't be disappointed that she plays only a bit part in Johansen's newest; Sarah and Monty are worth a series of their own, and The Search is a terrific beginning. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly
Two strong-minded women from Johansen's bestselling Killing Game make return appearances in her latest thriller, with their billing reversed: Irish-Apache search-and-rescue worker Sarah Patrick is the star, while her friend, forensic sculptor Eve Duncan, takes a supporting role. The center-stage love story also features a twist. Eve's billionaire entrepreneur ex-lover, John Logan, falls for Sarah even while risking her life in his war with hyper-evil Martin Rudzak, who has already killed his own half-sister, Chen Li, rather than lose her to John. Johansen's roots lie in historical romance, but her thrillers ooze enough testosterone to suggest she also descends from the house of Robert Ludlum. Sarah and her fabulous canine partner, golden retriever Monty, slog into the aftermaths of a Turkish earthquake and a Taiwanese mudslide, and engage in a heartbreaking search for drowned teens in a lake near Sarah's Arizona cabin. They deal with bullets and bombs and collaborate to save a cruelly trapped wolf, dubbed Maggie, whose unlikely cross-species passion for Monty provides neat commentary on female-male attraction in general--and there's no need to be a dog-lover to revel in Sarah and Monty's empathetic closeness. On the downside, Johansen seems more interested in telling her story than in writing it. To create a sense of urgency, she relies heavily on the device of the two-word sentence and the one-sentence paragraph; parts of the book read like shorthand. Sarah and John globe trot, but there's scant sense of place, and minor characters like nasty Sen. Todd Madden are one-dimensional. Then again, the novel admirably eschews gush and wallpaper--in a postfeminist way, Sarah's ruggedness simply is. For better or for worse, Johansen pushes the gender boundary in popular fiction, offering up that rarity: a woman's novel for men. Major ad/promo. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Working with golden retriever Monty as part of the ATF K-9 unit, Sarah Patrick excels at search-and-rescue. But her quest to find a kidnapped scientist for billionaire John Logan may be her last.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Oh Galen, cook -me- something! *cough*
The fact this book had a golden retriever, (Monty) in it who seemed to have a very special relationship with Sarah made me interested in reading it. I have to say though, I didn't like Logan much. He seemed way too powerful. It's just a lot of little things about the book bothered me. How he could call and just have things changed to fit him. But I loved Monty, and Galen. Rudzak seemed to go down pretty easily at the end for the ultimate bad guy, which disappointed me. He wasn't smart enough to think Logan was planning something as well? Bah humbug. The ending of stories should be great- leave you in awe. This gets 3 stars from me. D:

Ordinary
Not the best of Iris Johansen's creation but it is ok for a rainy day.

Excellent--one of Johansen's best!
The Search was the first book I read by Johansen and it wasn't the last! Since reading this novel, I have gone on to read her earlier ones, but The Search is still my favorite. It never lets up and keeps you glued, especially when you get to the last hundred pages!