KAVA, Alex

PERSONAL: Born Sharon Kava. Education: College of Saint Mary, B.A. (art, English; magna cum laude).

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Mira Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

CAREER: Writer, graphic designer, and teacher. Worked in various jobs for a hospital, a newspaper, and, for fifteen years, as a designer, writer, and director of a public relations firm; Square One (graphic design company), owner; part-time college teacher.

MEMBER: Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime.

WRITINGS:

"maggie o'dell" series

A Perfect Evil, Mira Books (Don Mills, Ontario, Canada), 2000.

Split Second, Mira Books (Don Mills, Ontario, Canada), 2001.

The Soul Catcher, Mira Books (Don Mills, Ontario, Canada), 2003.

ADAPTATIONS: A Perfect Evil was adapted for audiocassette, DH Audio, 2001.

SIDELIGHTS: Sharon Kava, who writes thrillers under the name Alex Kava, grew up in rural Nebraska, and she held a variety of jobs, one of which included cleaning up in the morgue and surgery departments of a hospital while she attended college. Kava graduated to work in commercial design and copy writing and, later, as a director of public relations. She decided to become a freelancer in 1996 and quit her full-time job. At this time, she resurrected Square One, her home-based graphic design business, and she even delivered newspapers for a time as she tried to pursue a career in writing. Kava lived in the town where serial killer John Joubert committed a number of murders in 1983, and his execution in 1996 brought back memories of the panic that had spread across Nebraska more than a decade earlier. In this way, Joubert became the inspiration for Kava's debut novel, A Perfect Evil.

As the story begins, Nick Morelli inherits his father's job as sheriff of Platte City, Nebraska, as well as a case he thought was closed. Ronald Jeffreys was executed for the murders of three children, only one of which he admitted to, but when the killings resume, Nick questions whether his father weighted the evidence against Jeffreys in order to get a conviction.

As he reopens the case, he is joined by Maggie O'Dell, a beautiful FBI profiler who is in the throes of a marriage breakup, and who is attracted to Nick, the handsome Harvard graduate who almost had a career playing with the Miami Dolphins. Nick's work is repeatedly made more difficult when his sister Christine, a newspaper reporter, leaks information. When her ten-year-old son goes missing, both the young single mother and the townspeople must face the fact that a killer is still on the loose.

In a Washington Post Book World review, Daniel Stashower said that Kava "has crafted a suspenseful novel and created a winning character in agent O'Dell. The author is somewhat less successful with Sheriff Morelli, who is a little to good to be true . . . he makes a curiously ineffective lawman, and seems unwilling to think ill of the most obvious suspects." A Publishers Weekly reviewer called A Perfect Evil "a well-crafted page-turner" and said that Kava "makes good use of the small town milieu, tightening the tension by establishing that the killer is part of the fabric of the community." A Kirkus Reviews contributor also felt that Kava "obviously knows the small-town milieu she writes about, though you have to wonder if the men in the real Nebraska are quite as uniformly brutish as in her world."

Kava's Maggie reappears in Split Second, now divorced and moved to a new neighborhood. She has spent the last two years studying the gory crimes of Albert Stucky, the maniac who appeared in the first novel and who marred her both physically and psychologically. When Stucky escapes while being transported to a maximum-security prison, killing two guards in the process, her nightmare continues. Stucky begins to kill and mutilate again, and this time he chooses people Maggie knows. She is forced to play the cat-and-mouse game he has set up for her, giving up her sleep and nearly her sanity as she waits for each new move.

Mystery Ink reviewer Maili Montgomery wrote that "the villain's horrible crimes are described in vivid detail, making the reading unsuitable for the weak-stomached. But the attention to detail provides an almost tangible depiction of the evil that is out there and the desperate struggle to overcome it." Meanwhile, a Publishers Weekly contributor called the novel "a blender job: part Thomas Harris and part Patricia Cornwell, with odd bones and scraps tossed in."

A reviewer for Fruitcake Outlet online wrote that there isn't "much gray area" regarding the characters in Kava's books, adding, in reference to Maggie, "why does she compartmentalize everything as either good and evil? This is too simple. People in real life are really never purely good or purely evil." The reviewer added, however, that "Despite its problems, Split Second was an enjoyable read. Kava is superb at her craft. She knows how to maintain tension and she rarely ever gives you a chance to breathe."

The Soul Catcher finds Maggie and her partner, R. J. Tulley, in Massachusetts, where a standoff with the FBI results in six cult members in a remote cabin committing suicide by cyanide. The leader of the Church of Spiritual Freedom is Reverend Joseph Everett, who relieves his followers of their worldly goods and seduces female followers into granting him sexual favors. Maggie is drawn into the investigation when a senator's daughter is found murdered at a church revival, and because one of Everett's followers is Maggie's mother, Kathleen. A Kirkus Reviews contributor wrote, "This time it's the mom who's brainwashed and in a cult's clammy clutches, the daughter striving to pry her loose." A Publishers Weekly reviewer, meanwhile, commented that the novel "manages to humanize both the seemingly impersonal institution of the FBI and cultists who are normally just labeled as wacko." Harriet Klausner, in Brook-Browser online, wrote, "Turning a Ruby Ridge-Waco scenario into a real drama works for this novel because the zillion of support characters seem so genuine, leading to a plausible exhilarating plot."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2000, review of A Perfect Evil, p. 821; July 1, 2002, review of The Soul Catcher, p. 906.

Library Journal, June 15, 2001, Joseph L. Carlson, review of A Perfect Evil (audio), p. 122.

Publishers Weekly, July 10, 2000, review of A Perfect Evil, p. 43; July 9, 2001, review of Split Second, p. 43; July 15, 2002, review of The Soul Catcher, p. 56.

Washington Post Book World, October 29, 2000, Daniel Stashower, review of A Perfect Evil, p. 5.

online

BookBrowser,http://www.brookbrowser.com/ (June 16, 2001), Harriet Klausner, review of Split Second; (July 27, 2002) Harriet Klausner, review of The Soul Catcher.

Deadly Pleasures,http://www.deadlypleasures.com/ (July, 2001), interview with Kava.

eHarlequin.com,http://www.eharlequin.com/ (October 18, 2002), interview with Kava.

Fruitcake Outlet,http://www.fruitcakeoutlet.com/ (October 18, 2002), review of Split Second.

Mystery Ink,http://www.mysteryinkonline.com/ (October 18, 2002), Maili Montgomery, review of Split Second.

Mystery Reader,http://www.themysteryreader.com/ (September 23, 2002), Wendy Crutcher, review of Split Second.*