Carter Swart
Author of the Detective Lou Corso mystery series

As a fellow who's pushed a lot of fiction at the masses over the years, I really enjoy a good psychological thriller.  And Blackwater Tango delivers all that one expects from the genre, including lots of surprises, complexity of plot, and a riproaring ending that leaves one on the edge of his chair.  Its protagonist is a sympathetic character, one imbued with uncommon grit but with just enough vulnerability and human frailty to make her three dimensional.

Gena Hollender is a woman with a vicious beast riding within her, the terrible but veiled memory of capture and torture that requires a good exorcism.  A working psychologist and ex-FBI profiler, Gena has intimate knowledge of one particularly nasty serial killer, psychologist turned killer Victor Trikonis.  Victor, who has long been the object of an FBI manhunt, is into the cruel mindbending of his helpless victims, all young women whom he kidnaps, tortures, and later discards with a farewell slash across the throat and an ignominious display of the remains.

His latest victim has shown  up naked from the waist down in a lobster trap at the bottom of a harbor in Maine.  This sort of ghoulish display is Victor's trademark and it send Gena, who lives in Manhattan, to Main on the hunt for her nemesis, aided by two ex-compatriots, one a cop, the other a high ranking FBI agent and Gena's ex-lover.

While hunting for Victor, whose victims begin to surface again, Gena becomes increasingly aware that whether she's in Manhattan, enjoying the close friendship of her elderly neighbor, or is tramping around the cold topography of Main, she is being stalked by the shadowy Victor, who has some undefined and unfinished business with her.

Thus we are always kept in suspense, right up to the sizzling and surprising climax.

A splendid read, a page turner.