August 8, 2008.
Paperback 2006, 428 pages.
Started and finished this book on my way to Sydney (it's after all a trip that would take longer than 24 hours door to door). Just a so-so book.
The book's main character is Lindsay Boxer, a San Francisco cop (a Lieutenant). There are two strings of murders. First is by two gay serial killers who posed their victims. One was caught and the other committed suicide. The other is a series of many suspicious deaths at a hospital for which the hospital was sued for malpractice. The plot is not quite straightforward but unsatisfying. The lawyer for the plaintiffs was actually in collusion with the hospital's witness Garza (who pleaded the fifth on the stand). Turns out the murders were committed by a deranged nurse whom they didn't catch in San Francisco. She transferred to Atlanta and was apprehended there.
The title is very contrived. The four horsemen of the apocalypse are famine, death, pestilence, and war; according to the father of Yuki Castellano, one of the members of the Women's Murder Club, the fifth and most dangerous is man. She is referring to Garza. As far as I could tell, Garza didn't kill until the father of one of the victims tried to hurt him. And surely the nurse or the seriel killers were more dangerous.
I often say books are easy to start and difficult to finish (talking about writing here). Alas, this is another one of them.
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