This is Chelsea Cain's follow-up to the successful debut of her first novel, "Heartsick." In that novel, a New York Times best seller for weeks, the author left her readers hanging as to the fate of Portland police detective Archie Sheridan and the almost obsessive relationship that he had with a beautiful but deadly serial killer who he had sent to prison for life. A second outing for these two was practically foreordained.

Literary criminals are practically always men and serial killers are universally men, so Cain has struck a doubtless unappreciated blow for equal rights by creating an utterly evil and depraved woman who takes pleasure in carving up her victims, sometimes while they are still alive. Serial killer Gretchen Lowell is called "The Beauty Killer" and "The Queen of Evil" for having killed as many as 200 people during her 13 year crime spree. Her intellectual brilliance is only exceeded by her dazzling beauty, a beauty which hypnotized many and allowed her an entrée to conduct her morbid criminality.  

Archie was obsessed with bringing Lowell to justice, but the battle is tilted against him since the two adversaries are not intellectual equals. This allowed the demonically brilliant Lowell to play him like a violin. She was always one or two steps ahead of the dogged police detective. She even falsely impersonated a psychologist and offered counseling services to Archie. In this devious manner she was able to ferret out his secrets and innermost thoughts.

At the end of "Heartsick," a novel which I have not read, Archie argued for a life sentence for Gretchen Lowell so that he will have the opportunity to interview her on a weekly basis in an effort to obtain the names of her many victims. He is successful in this request, but it takes a while for everyone close to him to come to the horrible realization that his request disguises an ulterior motive. By this time Archie has fallen under Lowell's spell to the point that it becomes clear to his wife and his partner that he carries some kind of tortured love for her. 

Call it lust or call it obsession, but Archie's love for Gretchen Lowell becomes a disturbing balancing act between his morality and his personal responsibility. One would think that the guy should have known better after she had captured him, drugged him, held him prisoner for ten days, and carved out his spleen before she herself was captured and Archie rescued by his fellow police detectives. 

All of this happened in "Heartsick," so I picked up this book in the hope of being able to read "the rest of the story." Archie Sheridan's marriage to Debbie has since failed, because she is aware that he is in love with Gretchen Lowell. No one knows how to cope with this, least of all Archie, who subsists on a diet laced with Vicodyns in order to mask the pain of having had his innards carved up with a knife. Although divorced, Archie and Debbie still live together so that she can nurse him for the many medical problems left over because of his missing or damaged organs.   

Personal stories and possible new crime threads proceed along parallel paths in this new novel. A body is discovered in the very same park where Archie had found Gretchen Lowell's first victim, and, needless to say, this brings up sad memories for all. Meanwhile, Susan Ward, a cub reporter on the crime beat for the Portland Herald, is trying to enlist the aid of the lead crime reporter for help in getting her exposé published about a revered and powerful Oregon Senator having had an affair with an underage baby sitter many years before. Susan and the alcoholic senior reporter meet with the Senator's lawyer in a seedy bar to give him warning of the pending news story. Regrettably, shortly thereafter everything goes awry for Susan with her first being unable to locate the former baby sitter to corroborate her story. 

Archie, who is popping Vicodyns like breath mints, is shocked and crushed when his partner, Henry Sobol, tells him that he has authorized the transfer of Gretchen Lowell to a distant maximum security prison in order to prevent him from having any future contact with her. In Archie's disturbed mind, his weekly meetings with Gretchen are just about all that he has to live for with his liver about to collapse due to his ingestion of dangerous medicines. Somehow we all know that this will not be the end of it between Archie and Gretchen.

I give the author, Chelsea Cain, great credit for knowing how to write. This is one interesting and highly readable story. In addition, her creation of the Gretchen Lowell character as a supreme villain is utterly compelling and fascinating. However, what I did not want to see is the author teasing her readers (once again) with another ending that is not an ending. After all, when I get to an ending, I expect there to be an ending.

During what should have been a satisfying denouement, the author pulls a deux ex machina plot point out of thin air in order to allow her to milk the Archie-Gretchen relationship for yet another novel. I resent this, and my interest in this book fell off a cliff when I found this happening in the final few pages. Because of this, I cannot recommend this book. One book would have been best, two books much less so, but please don't send me down this path again with a third book. I have no interest in going there.

I picked up this novel knowing full well that this story was a continuation of Cain's previous novel, and I wanted to see how it would all play out. Now my advice to the author would be to wind this story up and show me that she knows how to create new and equally indelible characters. 2008, St. Martin's Minotaur, 325 pages.