Natalie Price runs Horizon House, a halfway house for newly released convicts in
the Massachusetts prison system. Under the gun - sometimes literally -
to keep things running safely, she's got her work cut out for her as a young
woman in a man's world.

The latest inmate to be put in her charge is Lynn Ingram, a transsexual
who was convicted of manslaughter but claimed self-defense. Since Ingram's
prison term didn't go smoothly - she was assaulted numerous times inside by
men and women alike - the staff is preparing for the worst.
Just days before Lynn's transfer, she's badly beaten, and it's clear that
Natalie and Detective Leo Coscarelli have a determined killer on
their hands.

Inside Out is a raw, intense second installment in Elise Title's
captivating series.

Thirty-one-year-old Natalie Price has a tough job. A superintendent in the Massachusetts
pre-release system, she rules over inmates' lives just before they get released. She's had
to fight hard to be taken seriously in this world that is mostly male on both sides of the
bars. But she believes in what she's doing, and she's good at it. However, she gets the
biggest challenge of her 6-year career when a good friend, a college professor who was
teaching one of Natalie's charges, a convicted rapist, is brutally murdered. Now the inmate
is the prime suspect.

Peppered with telling details about the ins and outs of prison life, Killing Time delivers
a gripping, atmospheric story bursting with authenticity. Overall, Killing Time is an ambitious
beginning to a promising new commercial series.

Those who think women can't write tough prose should meet the star of this series debut, Natalie
Price, superintendent of Horizon House, a prerelease facility for prison inmates in Boston, Mass.
Title succeeds at "tough"-read mean, ornery, brutal and brutalized with a dash of despair-where
many writers, including men, fail. The author, a former prison psychotherapist, knows what the
system does to people, which is what this novel is really about. Nat's world falls apart when her
good friend, Maggie Austin, is found dead, tied to her bed with her own pantyhose. The method
instantly calls to mind a rape allegedly committed years before by Dean Thomas Walsh, a prisoner
who was a student of Maggie's and of whose poetic talent she thought highly. Nat had
recommended Walsh's release, believing his claim to be innocent of the crime. Nat is also inclined
to believe he didn't murder Maggie, but things go from bad to worse for Walsh when he escapes
from custody, and later, Alison Cole, the original rape victim whose testimony sent him to prison,
is murdered. Aiding Nat in her personal investigation is Detective Leo Coscarelli, whose youthful
good looks mask his mature abilities. Before long, their professional relationship takes an
intimate turn. Though some may find the plot overly familiar, this is a work of fine intelligence
and sensitivity that should appeal to readers of both sexes who like their mysteries raw.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Eight years after his conviction for raping coed Alison Cole, three weeks after his admission to
Horizon House, the Boston pre-release facility Natalie Price runs, Dean Walsh is in major trouble
again. Maggie Austin, the English prof whose creative-writing class had thrown her together with
Walsh the budding poet, has been murdered, her body found in a state Alison Cole might have
posed for. Det. Leo Coscarelli naturally takes Walsh, who has no alibi for Maggie's death, as his only
suspect-but not for long, since author Title (Romeo, 1996) has thoughtfully stocked the city to
bursting with red herrings, from Walsh's jailhouse enemies to adventuresome Maggie's brace of
lovers (she liked it rough, and not just with men) to Nat's own philandering husband Ethan. All is
confusion till Walsh reclaims his place at the head of the queue by escaping from custody and
vanishing just as Nat's relationship with Leo is getting interesting. From then on, despite the offstage
manhunt for Walsh, the real story is open season on Nat, whose vicissitudes-she's attacked by a hit
-and-run driver, slugged, and taken hostage repeatedly, and the house she once shared with Ethan
torched-alternate with scenes of Leo's courtship and her enterprising attempts to make contact with
Walsh on her own. The fadeout shows several malefactors brought to book but the romance still iffy.
Excitement galore with a pointed moral in its tail-even though you'll need a scorecard to keep all
those sexually predatory suspects straight. First of a series.

David Pitt Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Elise Title was a prison psychotherapist--not a bad source of inspiration and plotlines for a writer of
tough, tense, psychological thrillers like her most recent one, "Romeo." Now she starts a promising
series about Natalie Price, a woman in charge of a Boston prerelease facility called Horizon House,
where inmates get a chance to adjust to the world again before being put back into the shark pond --
either as predators or victims (or both at once). There are some moments of visceral overkill and a
budding romance with an attractive cop, but the narrative engine that drives this story of the search
for a rapist and murderer who might have fooled his way through the system is strong enough to
overcome a few lapses. At its heart,"Killing Time" is a gripping, painful story of
failed hope and misdirected redemption.

When I'm not wearing away my fingertips at the computer, I force myself to work out regularly (sorry, I know
exercise is supposed to invigorate and energize you, but I'm one of the unlucky ones who experiences none of
those nice secondary gains). For me, it's medicine. But I know I need it.

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