title: Good to the Last Kiss (Crimes of the Depraved Mind Series)
author:  Ronald Tierney 
description: Tierney (Bullet Beach, 2011, etc.) serves up a dark, twisty little gem in which a pair of embittered detectives and a not-quite-dead victim combine irresistibly. Inspectors Gratelli and McClellan are grizzled, rumpled and, often enough, despairing members of SFPD Homicide. This is truer of pot-bellied, nicotine-stained McClellan than it is of quieter, tougher-grained Gratelli, who has somehow managed to craft a coping mechanism. Not so his partner, whose world view has grown almost insupportably bleak. "It's the survival of the sickest," he insists, commenting on their daily work product. Moreover, both are depressingly aware that their colleagues--those smartly dressed, brainy new men--think of them as has-beens. So when they're shunted aside, relegated to what seems a minor piece of a major investigation, they don't like it, but they're hardly surprised. A serial killer has been battening on the city's young women, beating, raping and murdering them, then marking each with his signature, a roughly carved flower. Julia Bateman, too, has been beaten, raped and marked, but not quite murdered. Comatose, she clings to life. Will she prove to be the serial killer's downfall? Certainly they don't come much braver than Julia. Or more dogged than Gratelli. Every year the genre has its Goliaths, bigger and better ballyhooed than this modest entry. Come Edgar time, however, Tierney's well-written, tidily plotted, character-driven David of a book deserves to be remembered. -- Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2011
zlib_text: **Praise for Ted Dekker and Erin Healy Novels**
  
  “A perfect 10 packed with romance, politics, scandals, and non-stop suspense.”
  
  —Laura Wilkinson, Olympic gold medalist  
  and world champion diver
  
  “. . . no less fast-moving than the Christy Award–winning author’s solo prose,
  but also more gripping as it plunges into the life of a woman with frayed and
  painful family relationships . . .”
  
  — _Publishers Weekly_
  
  “Dekker and Healy form a powerful team in crafting redemptive suspense. _Kiss_
  is emotionally absorbing and mentally intriguing—don’t miss it.”
  
  —Lisa T. Bergren, author of _The Blessed_
  
  “The human brain could actually be the real final frontier—we know so little
  about it and yet it drives the world as we know it. So when authors like Erin
  and Ted bravely explore these mysterious regions, going into complex places
  like memory and soul and relationships, I become hooked. The creativity of
  this suspenseful story is sure to hook other readers as well. Very memorable!”
  
  —Melody Carl