Our story, set in Portland OR, opens in present-tense as serial-killer Gretchen Lowell tortures her captive by breaking all of his ribs with a hammer. Be warned: you're in for a grisly read.

Her captive is Archie Sheridan, the homicide detective trying to track her down. Chapter 2 opens two years later with him broken in spirit and body. Apparently, he got through ten days of torture before Gretchen turned herself in. Now she's serving a life sentence in the state prison, and Sheridan is dragging himself off medical leave to head a task force investigating a new serial killer.

Someone is abducting, assaulting, and murdering adolescent girls. The killer grabs them at or near their schools, and he looks for a distinct type of brunette. The Portland police reassemble many of Sheridan's old colleagues on the task force including Claire, a tough cop; Anne, an African-American psychiatrist/profiler; and Henry, Sheridan's protective former partner. Everyone watches Sheridan nervously, unsure how close to edge he treads. Everyone can see that he pops pills constantly: he claims that the prescription painkillers and tranquillizers are aspirins.

Henry is especially concerned because Sheridan's marriage has disintegrated due to his inexplicable continued obsession with Gretchen Lowell. Every Sunday Sheridan visits Gretchen at prison, supposedly to wheedle her into giving up the burial locations of the 200 or so victims that she slaughtered in various gruesome ways during her own killing spree. But Henry and Sheridan and Gretchen all know that Sheridan visits her because he can't stay away.

A new character makes the scene in Chapter 3: Susan Ward, a snarky reporter for the Herald. Susan, in her mid-twenties, has a funky hippie-mom, a dead father, and a fixation upon older male authority figures. Blessed with delicate features, she undercuts her own beauty by dyeing her hair cotton-candy pink. She sleeps with her boss, and is currently pursuing an exposé on a powerful senator who seduced his kids' teenaged babysitter. Susan, while not exactly likable, is certainly lively. She is about to join Archie Sheridan's investigation, and become the major viewpoint in the novel.

Heartsick is a well-written thriller with several good traits that stand out the strongest when the story centers on Susan: fast pacing, crisp dialogue, and shrewdly observed details about the characters. Its weakness is the continuation of poor Sheridan's present-tense torture scenes from two years ago. The first torture scene in Chapter 1 conveyed all we needed to know: the rest of them are – pun intended – overkill. So you can safely start skipping at the first sign of present-tense (for example, She forces him to drink the drain cleaner …) and not miss anything in your quest to know how the crime gets solved, and how Susan and Sheridan come to terms with their various demons.

Heartsick is available at Amazon through this link: Heartsick