Without Conscience (The Conrad Chronicles)

Without Conscience is the final installment in author Doug Dalzell's trilogy The Conrad Chronicles, concluding the series begun withSeat 23 and Family Secrets.

There are three generations that comprise the Conrad clan, a wealthy medical family in Chicago. Seat 23 centered around Jason Conrad, a young med-school student in the present day. Family Secrets intertwined the story of Jason's grandfather Oliver, the patriarch of the family, and Jason's MD father, James, and their connections to the Chicago underworld. Without Conscience has as its main focus Jason's sister Meredith, who falls under the influence of a shady, sinister outsider, Michael Grant (one of several aliases), whom the family suspects of being more interested in Meredith's trust-fund wealth than in Meredith.

But, because Grant's perfidy has tragic consequences for all those he comes in contact with, Dalzell opens the story and spends a great deal of time on Jeremy Clausen, an Army veteran who is not related to the Conrads but whose sister is among Grant's victims.

But this is not the only way in which Without Conscience differs from its predecessors. While the action of the first two books centered around a medical school in the American South and Oliver Conrad's suburban Chicago mansion, respectively, Dalzell moves the action in Without Conscience literally around the world -- Aruba, the UK, France -- and lends the plot a broader, more-expansive feel.

But these differences do not affect the ingenious plot devices which Dalzell used in the first two books and which he continues in the third. They have become a kind of personal stamp or trademark on his unique brand of storytelling: Someone will beat someone else to the punch in carrying out an action that is central to the story. There will be a document that contains compromising information. And there will be no way the reader will ever be prepared for any of it -- despite Dalzell's deft use of subtle foreshadowing. Few writers today can match his talent for keeping details close to his vest and for the unexpected plot twist. Without Conscience's final scene wrings out every last drop of suspense possible and keeps readers on their toes right up to the very end. Take a deep breath when you get there -- you'll need it.

Without Conscience is a wildly entertaining novel, a fitting and effective coda to an engrossing trilogy about a fascinating family.