Library Journal
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When detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are kidnapped by dying billionaire Trevor Stone and forced to find his lost daughter, they become entwined in a vicious whodunit in which "up is down and north is south." The case takes them to Grief Release Inc., a Boston-area church/cult whose members purge their sins, secrets, and financial records; then, accompanied by Stone's henchmen, to Tampa, Florida, where a top-of-the-line sports car and all the money they can spend are put at their disposal. Kenzie and Gennaro ditch it all to continue the search on instinct in a cheap convertible. When the detectives finally find their prize, the perfecto, leggy Desiree Stone, she turns out to be much more than they bargained for. With its fast-paced plot, Lehane's (Darkness, Take My Hand, LJ 7/96) newest will be a winner with adventure buffs. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 4/15/97.]?Ahmad Wright, "Library Journal" (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

School Library Journal
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YA?Dying billionaire Trevor Stone has his thugs kidnap sleuths Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro and bring them to his mansion so he can hire them to find his missing daughter, Desire. She is supposedly grief-stricken over the death of her mother and the impending death of her father but it becomes clear that she may not be the sweet and beautiful daughter her father describes. Patrick's mentor, Jay Becker, was the first investigator on the case but he has also disappeared. Patrick and Angie follow the trail to Florida after a brief encounter with a group of religious swindlers who may be involved with the disappearances. Every person they meet adds more confusion and conflicting information to the puzzling case. The intricate mystery of the changing identity of Desire, dangerous car chases, bloody shoot-outs, and the humorous dialogue between Patrick and Angie, all with subtle romantic overtones, will keep YAs happily turning pages.?Katherine Fitch, Lake Braddock Middle School, Burke, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The kidnapping really should have tipped them off. You can't have much of a relationship with a client who grabs you off the street, drugs you, and ties you to a couple of chairs while he makes his pitch. But dying billionaire Trevor Stone, whose wife is dead and whose daughter has disappeared, is obviously a man in pain, and the $50,000 retainer he offers (plus $200,000 for expenses) goes a long way to soften the insult. So Boston shamus Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, his partner, friend, and sometime lover, agree to follow Patrick's vanished mentor Jay Becker into the darkness surrounding beautiful, depressed Desiree Stone, and soon--with only a brief intermission for a lovely farewell bash for their prison-bound buddy Bubba Rogowski--they're tangling with fraudulent grief counselors, a clever and vindictive IRS computer geek, and the Church of Truth and Revelation. And that's only the beginning, since the trail of Desiree's last known companion leads to Tampa, where the serious corpses will start to pile up, and where they'll finally get an inkling of the true relationship between their megalomaniac client and his anaconda-like daughter, ""a Noäl Coward play that had been rewritten by Sam Shepard."" Lehane's barn-burning third novel (Darkness, Take My Hand, 1996, etc.) packs enough beatings, betrayals, unmaskings, resurrections, smart talk, and untrustworthy people for the most jaded palate. If you haven't discovered this gifted newcomer yet, you'd better hurry before his ship of fools and knaves casts off without you. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Publishers Weekly
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Sharp verbal patter, a noirish kind of good/bad girl and a dying and quite possibly sinister old man all enliven this third stellar effort from the author of the Shamus Award-winning A Drink Before the War and Darkness, Take My Hand. PI Angela Gennaro lost her husband, and her partner, Patrick Kenzie, lost much of the skin from his face in their last outing. Now the Boston-based sleuthing partners are recovering nicely, slowly succumbing to a mutual attraction and searching for a missing girl. Billionaire Trevor Stone, dying of cancer, hires Patrick and Angie to find his daughter Desiree only after his first choice, Jay Becker, who was Patrick's mentor, disappeared during his quest for Desiree. The young woman was last seen at the highly questionable Grief Release Inc., getting over the year-old murder of her mother and hanging out with Sean Price. After Price ripped off the group, Desiree vanished with him. Is Trevor on the level? Is Desiree a wounded angel or something else entirely? While following the trail, Angie and Patrick emerge, in Patrick's smart and often funny narration, as boldly sketched characters who leap fully formed from the pages. For most of the novel, the punishing pace and internal plot logic perform in perfect tandem. Only Desiree's long-delayed entrance and an over-the-top ending are jarring. In all other respects, Lehane proves he belongs in the big leagues with another gritty and surpassingly entertaining mystery. Major ad/promo; 13-city author tour. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

A wealthy widower hires a team of private investigators to find his missing daughter . . . and, while they're at it, to locate the last private investigator he hired to find her. Soon the detective team of Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro find themselves hip deep in confusion and paranoia, with no idea who (or what) to believe. This is Lehane's third novel (following Darkness, Take My Hand [1996] and the Shamus Award^-winning A Drink before the War [1994]), and it's devilishly twisted, a kind of Elmore-Leonard-meets-The-Sting in which everyone is trying to con everyone else. The characters are well drawn (especially the billionaire and his daughter, who keep revealing new things about themselves, right up until the last scene), the mystery perplexing (it involves, among other things, a religious cult), and the conclusion deeply satisfying. Sacred is a first-class novel that will delight anyone who loves an intricate mystery. --David Pitt

Library Journal
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In this latest from Lehane, the Shamus Award-winning author of A Drink Before the War (LJ 11/1/94), a pair of private investigators search for the missing daughter of a dying billionaire. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.