Title: Call Her Sabine

Author: A.R. Simmons

Rating: 4/5

Synopsis:

Deputy Richard Carter returns in the sixth novel of AR Simmons’ tales of obsession. Call Her Sabine is a contemporary crime mystery pitting a persistent “everyman” against a cunning abductor with an odd mania.
How did coed Charlie Fouts get here? Does anyone even know that she is gone? And what does “the freak” want of her?
Two young women are found drowned within the space of two weeks. Carter has a policeman’s distrust of coincidence, but it appears one the first woman’s death was an accident, while the second was a suicide. Then a college athlete goes missing during an early-morning jog, causing him to suspect that a local killer has claimed his third victim.
As Carter tries to reconstruct the last day she was seen, Charlie is held by an unknown abductor who only communicates with her via computer screen. Can she do what is necessary to survive? Can Carter find her in time?
Try Call Her Sabine (a stand-alone novel) if you enjoy: Mystery Suspense Series, Crime or Psychological Thrillers, Police Procedurals, Detective Series, or Tales of Obsession.

Review:

Call Her Sabine is the best mystery/thriller novel that I have read all year.  I am always a sucker for crime novels that involve kidnappings due to the intensity involved, and A.R. Simmons’ descriptions and characters just flew off of the page.  The novel is the sixth in a series, but it is a standalone novel and can be read without having read the other novels in the series.  I loved how the novel showed both the sides of the victims as well as Carter, the main character who is a policeman.  The writing was dry and the descriptions of the crimes were not explicit, making the novel a fun read because not too much was given away.  The story was in depth, and it created a puzzle for the reader to analyze.  Call Her Sabine was a true page turner, and I would happily read it over again, which is something that I rarely do.

My only critique is that the novel could be choppy at times, and some of the events seemed a bit rushed.  It was clear that Simmons did not want to over-describe any of the events, but I do wish that some of them had been expanded on.  However, this did not deter from my reading experience, and I enjoyed every element to the story.

Something that I sometimes see in crime novels is that the victims are not taken seriously, or they are not emphasized as much as they should.  I do not like crime novels that seem to care more about the detectives or police officers involved, and Simmons did a great job of making sure that the victims had faces, names, and stories that were important to the case.  He made me empathize with the victims and what they were put through, and I wanted to hold all of them by the end.  Carter was also painted as a hard police officer, but he showed compassion at many times and his humanity is what helped me connect to him.  I fought along with him as he investigated the different crimes, and I began to see him as a friend and a colleague by the end of the novel.

Call Her Sabine is a perfect novel for those who are interested in life-like investigations and kidnapping/murder crimes.  As someone who has worked in corrections, I found the book to be realistic and intense.  I would highly suggest this novel to anyone who loves a great crime story, or those looking to get into the genre, and you can’t go wrong with an A.R. Simmons novel.

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