Reviews for Outfox

by Sandra Brown

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

An FBI agent is determined to catch a man who bilks and murders wealthy women, but the chase goes slowly.Brown (Tailspin, 2018, etc.) has published 70 bestsellers, and this one employs her usual template of thriller spiked with romance. Its main character, Drex Easton, is an FBI agent in pursuit of a serial killer, but for him it's personal. When he was a boy, his mother left him and his father for another man, Weston Graham. Drex believes Graham murdered her and that he has killed at least seven more women after emptying their bank accounts. Now he thinks he has the clever Grahamcurrent alias Jasper Fordin his sights, and he's willing to put his career at risk to catch him. The women Ford targets are wealthy, and his new prey is no exceptionexcept that, uncharacteristically, he has married her. Talia Ford proves to be a complication for Drex, who instantly falls in lust with her even though he's not at all sure she isn't her husband's accomplice. Posing as a would-be novelist, Drex moves into an apartment next door to the Fords' posh home and tries to ingratiate himself, but tensions rise immediatelyJasper is suspicious, and Talia has mixed feelings about Drex's flirtatious behavior. When Talia's fun-loving friend Elaine Conner turns up dead after a cruise on her yacht and Jasper disappears, Drex and Talia become allies. There are a few action sequences and fewer sex scenes, but the novel's pace bogs down repeatedly in long, mundane conversations. Drex's two FBI agent sidekicks are more interesting characters than he is; Drex himself is such a caricature of a macho man, so heedless of ethics, and so aggressive toward women that it's tough to see him as a good guy. Brown adds a couple of implausible twists at the very end that make him seem almost as untrustworthy as Graham.This thriller about the pursuit of a serial killer suffers from an unpleasant hero and a glacial pace. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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