The Boyfriend reintroduces readers to Jack Till, a retired LAPD homicide detective turned private investigator who first starred in Thomas Perry's 2007 novel Silence. Jack usually works routine cases, but the parents of a recently murdered girl, Catherine Hamilton, come to him in desperation. They've just discovered that Catherine was working as a high-class prostitute, and the cops are dismissive, chalking her death up to the hazards of her occupation. Till starts looking into the matter and discovers that Catherine seems to have had a boyfriend who vanished with all her money and jewelry. What's more, Catherine's actually the fifth escort with strawberry-blonde hair shot in the head over the last couple of months. Convinced he's unearthed a serial killer, Till delves into the case, which leads him on a nationwide hunt for the brilliant, good-looking, but disturbed "Boyfriend."
Robertson Dean's deep voice is a bit jarring in the first chapter, told from Catherine's perspective, but because the rest of the story alternates between the points of view of Till and the Boyfriend, his narration is pitch perfect, bringing the detective's determined hunting and the killer's increasingly desperate (and foolish) crime spree to life. The plot of The Boyfriend is not exactly original, but on audio it still plays out well and Dean makes the minutes fly by. The Boyfriend is a perfect summer audio book--meant to be listened to while jogging down a beach or lazing next to the pool. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm