The Chalk Girl

Starred review from October 31, 2011
Near the start of bestseller O’Connell outstanding 10th novel featuring New York City cop Kathy Mallory (after 2006’s Find Me), the enigmatic Mallory, despite having been declared mentally unfit to return to duty following an unexplained three month long absence, nonchalantly reclaims her desk in the Special Crimes Unit. Nobody questions “Mallory the Machine,” especially after she connects with a savantlike child found wandering alone in Central Park. Eight-year-old Coco has witnessed a kidnapping and murder, but the girl is incapable of describing the killer. The murder of Coco’s uncle is one of three similar crimes that Mallory begins to suspect are linked to a couple of cold cases as well as to pervasive corruption among the city’s elite. O’Connell’s awesome ability to weave a taut, complex plot works with Mallory’s equally awesome detective skills as she unearths each crystalline facet of crimes both past and present. Author tour.

December 1, 2011
A complex, gritty thriller that is at once hard to take and hard to put down. It opens with a woman taking a group of schoolchildren on a visit to Sheep Meadow, part of Manhattan's Central Park. After the children wander off, she collapses and dies from a massive stroke, and a horde of rats gnaw on her corpse. A mysterious 8-year-old waif named Coco appears and displays considerable knowledge of vermin. One of a series of novels featuring NYPD detective Kathy Mallory, this book has a number of surprising and grisly twists. The characters are fascinating, though, including crazy Mallory, who had once been a street urchin herself and now brings a unique perspective to her job. Coco has Williams Syndrome, a condition that manifests itself partly in excessive desire to be loved, even by strangers. Give her a hug and she's cool, but don't get her started talking about rats. Meanwhile, Mallory investigates the murder of a schoolboy named Ernest Nadler--Dead Ernest--who has been systematically tormented by a small group of other children. Who are they, and why did they do it? Has someone put them up to the crime? No doubt children exist who are capable of such evil, although they are hard to imagine. And perhaps such children--speaking of vermin--need no particular motivation to inflict themselves on a classmate. But the ultimate motivation for the crime and the deep, insane intrafamily hatred seem rather hard to believe. Hardly the craziest character in the story, Mallory pursues the case with a certain emotional detachment. She gets in the faces of powerful people even as she strives to protect the strange Coco, who doesn't seem surprised when rats fall from the sky. Readers who dislike tales of torture and murder of children will take a pass on this one, but those who relish justice will be glad they read to the end.

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August 1, 2011

The little girl says that the blood on her shoulder came from the sky--and that her uncle has turned into a tree. In fact, there is a body in the tree, and Kathy Mallory, back in the Special Crimes Unit after three months and still feeling fragile, is the only one able to get through to the child. She discovers some truly nasty stuff going back 15 years. Important for mystery collections.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2011
Kathy Mallory of the NYPD's Special Crimes Unit may be the Lord Byron of police detectives. Like Byron, the gorgeous and beyond-eccentric Mallory is mad, bad, and dangerous to know. In this remarkable series, Mallory, wounded by a horrific childhood, concentrates her entire being on the vengeful pursuit of bad guys, using some well-developed criminal skills to flush them out of hiding. Mallory is pulled out of leave (brought on by the department psychiatrist's labeling her as dangerously unstable ) by a case her superiors think that only she, rocky as she is, can solve. The case turns on one witness, an eight-year-old girl with a rare genetic disorder that leaves her physically and emotionally vulnerable, who knew a serial killer's first victim, found hanging from a tree in Central Park. Victims range from a homeless man to a prep-school boy and his grieving parents. O'Connell delivers shock after shock, held together by exquisitely detailed police and forensic procedure and by the riveting, punishing figure of Mallory herself.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

Starred review from November 15, 2011

It has been five years since O'Connell gave us a new novel in her Mallory series, but the action picks up only a few weeks after we last saw Mallory melting down in Find Me. Once again, a child is in jeopardy, one who may be a witness to a series of grisly crimes in New York's Central Park. Coco is an unusual child, but she charms even the antisocial detective Mallory, though her partner, Riker, and friend Charles Butler doubt how deeply she can care for the little girl. But Mallory, who predates both Dexter Morgan and Lisbeth Salander as an unlikely crime-stopping sociopath, does care for Coco--in her own violently protective way. As Mallory and Riker unravel the mystery, older crimes are uncovered, along with the ways adults repeatedly fail the children around them. VERDICT O'Connell offers more than a suspenseful tale; she portrays a complex world of dark and light, corruption and love, in a New York City that retains its grittiness. Another must-read in a compelling and rich crime series. [See Prepub Alert, 7/11/11.]--Devon Thomas, DevIndexing, Chelsea, MI

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.