Finally free, at least physically, of his former lover and crazed torturer, Gretchen Lowell, who's behind bars, Portland Detective Archie Sheridan vies with a slightly more mundane serial killer in Cain's latest installment in the series (Heartsick, 2007, etc.).Where do you go as a mystery writer after your beautiful, smart, cruelly amusing main attraction has pulled out all psychotic stops in making your star detective's life an unrelieved hell? Inthis volume, Cain gives Gretchen a breather and replaces her with a largely unseen male menace. Accompanied by a nine-year-old boy who was stolen from his parents 18 months ago, this serial killer carries around small, blue-ringed octopuses in baggies, subjects his victims to their poisonous bites and tosses the corpses in the river. The killings begin after the discovery of a skeleton points back to the Vanport flood of 1948, which wiped out an entire public-housing project and claimed the lives of many residents who were tardily warned by authorities of the impending disaster. Sixty-two years later, with the overflowing Willamette River about to wreak havoc on Portland, two people close to the still-shaky Sheridan are touched by the octopus killer's evil: Henry Sobol, a fellow cop, and Susan Ward, a hungry crime columnist with wild hair. Compared to the Gretchen Lowell books, there's nothing else particularly wild aboutthis novel.But the story is deftly handled, the suspense is plentiful and Cain's evocation of the gloomy atmosphere and Portland setting is superb. Gretchen fans will be pleased when she shows up at the end and with a glance tells us we haven't seen the last of her, but this novel does an excellent job of killing time until then.A strong and satisfying, if less extreme, outing from the new queen of serial-killer fiction.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

PORTLAND, Ore., is wet from the start of "The Night Season." A storm has soaked the city for weeks. Gulls line the roads, blown inland from the sea. The Willamette River surges with debris. Rain cascades from rooftops and clogs the basement drains of the Multnomah County morgue. This Portland is much like the one in Chelsea Cain's previous novels, but darker, blurred around the edges and sunk under a cloud cover that threatens to engulf it completely. Into this waterlogged world trudges Cain's troubled hero, Detective Archie Sheridan, "a stubborn martyr with a white knight complex." A woman has been found dead, draped atop the riverside merry-go-round. She seems to have drowned, but a tiny puncture on her palm suggests foul play. The two other people who drowned that week bear identical marks. When Archie's longtime partner, Henry Sobol, lands in the I.C.U. with an unknown toxin in his veins, the case takes on new urgency. Suspended in semiconsciousness, Henry is both silent witness and sole survivor of the murderer's rite. By now, Archie (and Cain's loyal readers, of which there are many) knows the signs of a serial killer all too well. In "Heartsick" and its two sequels, Cain conjured Gretchen Lowell, a blue-eyed psychopath with an endless résumé of gory murders. Archie was Gretchen's special victim, trapped and tortured after 10 years on her trail, and spared at the 11th hour in a twisted act of mercy. Back in jail, Gretchen has receded to the fringes of the narrative, but her lethal beauty haunts the detective. He fingers the heart-shaped scar she carved into his chest as if it has replaced his own. The crimes in "The Night Season" are at once less plausible and less deliciously perverse than Gretchen's drawn-out butcheries. As the hours creep by, the task force discovers the killer's bizarre, aquarium-bound weapon. The motive is murkier. Susan Ward, The Oregon Herald's neon-haired crime columnist, returns in a central role, shadowing Archie as he makes his sleepless way through the investigation. Despite his half-hearted attempts to shake her off, her dogged detective work proves crucial to the case. "You know how everyone has a tiny talent?" she asks him. "Like parallel parking? Or catching serial killers? Mine is Googling." Irreverent, vulnerable and sharp, she is as shrewdly drawn as Archie and as interesting to watch. As in the past, she ends up in the thick of things, and the book's high-octane ending hinges on her resolve. Cain intercuts her quick-paced chapters, which spin each narrative strand with expert restraint, with brief moments in the murderer's footsteps. In one early scene, Susan scours the park at night while the killer follows two paces behind, obscured by the darkness beyond her flashlight's beam. "He could kill her. In a heartbeat," he thinks. "He would not even break a sweat doing it." These glimpses of psychosis are unsettling, but they never chill with the force of Gretchen's ice-blue stare. Like Gretchen, this novel's cephalopod-obsessed killer wants his victims to experience death - to know it intimately. But there is a motive to his derangement. Perhaps inevitably, Gretchen's deadly machinations are more frightening for their wanton brand of evil. Still, the world that Cain creates is as dark and ominous as ever. The novel's greatest menace is the weather, which transforms Portland's familiar topography into something less than welcoming. Flooded and obscured by rain, the city becomes wild, unknowable: "The thin wisps of trees lining the sidewalk shuddered, bare-leaved, in the wind. The whole world glistened wet and black, like the Pacific Ocean at night." When the storm nearly levels its downtown, the sudden shifts in perspective are vertiginous, and thrilling. This is the mood that Cain has mastered: the dread of knowing something is off, but not being able to see it clearly. It is what presses her readers onward, pulses rising along with the waterline. 'You know how everyone has a tiny talent? Like catching killers? Mine is Googling.' Zoë Slutzky has written for Bookforum, The Los Angeles Times and Mother Jones.

If Cain's new crime novel is to be believed, you don't want to be in Portland, Ore., when the Willamette River rises over its banks. Spunky reporter Susan Ward and depressed police detective Archie Sheridan spend most of the book slogging through slush or swimming for their lives while on the track of a serial killer who uses incurable octopi toxin to dispatch his victims. Putting Archie's homicidal paramour Gretchen Lowell behind bars has allowed Cain to reinvigorate the series, which includes bringing the likable Susan to the fore. This not only makes for a snappier story, it takes advantage of Christina Delaine's inspired interpretation of the ditsy, self-effacing, surprisingly professional reporter and intuitive sleuth. Her sotto voce, monotone Archie is on the money, too. He sounds as if he's still a long way from recovering from the mental and physical damage caused by Lowell. Near the book's end, Susan is locked in the killer's basement with a dead policeman, up to her waist in river water stocked with the deadly mollusks. Author and narrator combine to make it a memorably chilling moment in one of the series' better entries. A Minotaur hardcover. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

*Starred Review* Devoted readers of Cain's superb Archie Sheridan novels, starring the Portland, Oregon, police detective, have known all along that eventually the series would have to stand on its own without the mesmerizing presence of serial killer Gretchen Lowell, with whom Archie shares the quintessential love-hate relationship. But can Cain pull it off? Yes, indeed. As the novel begins, Portland is threatened by the worst flood since 1948, when the town of Vanport, just north of the city, was wiped from the map. Cain skillfully incorporates the details of the real-life Vanport flood into her story, which centers on the murders of a random group of victims who have been bitten by a rare breed of venomous octopus. The floodwaters continue to rise as Archie and reporter Susan Ward, elevated here from scene-stealing supporting player to full-fledged costar, track the killer and a boy he has apparently kidnapped. In the earlier books, Cain pinned readers to their seats with a unique mix of horror, black humor, and psychological tension. This time she adds another arrow to her narrative quiver: the interplay between landscape and mood. This may be the best thriller set in a flooding city since Donna Leon's Acqua Alta (1996). The enveloping floodwaters are every bit as terrifying as the octopus-toting killer (many of the key action scenes take place in or under the black water), and the river itself takes on a kind of evil persona, a superhuman antagonist of unfathomable power. Who knew it would take the Willamette River to prove that Chelsea Cain doesn't need Gretchen Lowell?--Ott, Bill Copyright 2010 Booklist

Portland, OR, is shutting down owing to torrential rains and rising floodwaters, but Det. Archie Sheridan can't come in because the dead body count is rising quickly, too. Conventional wisdom says these are drowning victims, but when colleague Henry Sobol is felled by a toxin, we realize a serial killer has devised yet another exotic means of death. Intrepid journalist Susan Ward thinks the victims are tied to the historic floods of 1948, and when the clues fall into place, Archie realizes she's right again. Fighting the weather and a crafty killer means they have to win this one the hard way-by swimming. The team continues to be haunted by their nemesis Gretchen Lowell, the so-called Beauty Killer, but her influence is minimal in Cain's fourth Archie Sheridan novel (Heartsick; Sweetheart; Evil at Heart), and this brings a certain freshness to the story line. VERDICT Perfect for readers who want to mix true crime history with their contemporary serial killers, as in Lisa Black's Trail of Blood or Michael Harvey's The Third Rail. The pace is as relentless as the floodwaters engulfing Portland. Buy heavily and enjoy recommending this to new Cain fans. [150,000-copy first printing; library marketing.]-Teresa L. Jacobsen, Solano Cty. Lib., Fairfield, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.