Book Review: Born Bad

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Born Bad     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Barry Hoffman
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Police Procedural   Thriller   Psychological Suspense   Woman Main Character
Leisure, Nov 2000, $5.99, 400 pp.

The first death at the University of Pennsylvania seems like a cut and dry suicide case that even detective Doug Thiery, who handles the no-brainer cases, believes is a closed case. Doug’s partner Ariel Dampier has doubts that the coed killed herself, but nothing she can pinpoint. Making the investigation even more difficult for Ariel than being partnered with Doug is her ex-spouse Lucius (not the basketball player) Jackson who is a witness. Ariel has avoided Lucius for eight years, but now he is intricately involved as part of the campus police.

UPenn Quad is soon devastated when two more students apparently commit suicide. Ariel believes that her initial hunch that something is afoot is true. Partnering more with Lucius than Doug, she begins to investigate campus activities even as pressure mounts by the administration and her superiors to close the seemingly obvious cases.

Ariel and Lucius home in on a student Shanicha. They make progress towards proving she is behind the deaths. Shanicha seems to play an insidiously evil cat and mouse that seems to always end up in death that she fools almost everyone except one mixed blood Philadelphia female detective.

BORN BAD is a hair-raising police procedural that will alarm parents of college students living on campus so much that they might reconsider and put their children on a distant learning program from the home believing it is a much safer alternative. The story line creates levels of tension in the fan by taking the audience inside the minds of the key players. That methodology augments the chill factor by allowing the reader to understand the manipulative abilities of Shanicha the puppet-mistress, the social pressure of her machinations on her victims, and an inside the brain tour of Ariel. Barry Hoffman is as “bad” as they get with one of the year’s best psychological thrillers.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner