Zapped
Carol Higgins Clark
Scribner, Apr 2008, $24.00
ISBN: 9781416562153

After spending a delightful weekend at the Cape, NYPD Major Case Squad Chief Detective Jack Reilly and his wife private investigator Regan return to Manhattan. Jack stops for some Chinese take-out while Regan enters their partially renovated apartment where she finds a stun gun on the floor. Obviously someone broke and entered leaving behind evidence. However, a blackout engulfs the city leaving Reilly in the dark. Lorraine Lily is cursing her estrange husband for selling the pad to the Reillys without informing her while she was performing in London. She had a safe built that she needs to open before the Reillys find it or watch her career die.

Not too long afterward Jack is in Soho investigating a theft of valuable sculptures from an art gallery. Meanwhile their friend Kit calls frantically as she says she was with deranged Georgina at a comedy club when the woman vanished just as the blackout occurred; they know Georgina hates and hurts blond men.. Regan gathers a group to find them before her date is branded. Ironically the person who broke into her apartment and left the stun gun behind helps on the search

The chance meter is stratospheric as a series of coincidences especially the final spin stacks the deck. However, fans will not care as Regan works the B&E, Jack the art theft, and together the Georgina branding in a fast-paced suspense crime thriller in which Manhattanites think nothing of a blackout in July as this is somewhat the norm.

Harriet Klausner