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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780778325932
ISBN number: 0778325938
Label: Mira
Manufacturer: Mira
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 480
Printing Date: August 01, 2008
Publishing house: Mira
Sale Popularity Level: 217417
Studio: Mira
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Product Description:
The brutal murders of three young boys paralyze the citizens of Platte City, Nebraska. What's worse is the grim realization that the man recently executed for the crimes was a copycat. When Sheriff Nick Morrelli is called to the scene of another grisly murder, it becomes clear that the real predator is still at large, waiting to kill again.
Morrelli understands the urgency of the case terrorizing his community, but it's the experienced eye of FBI criminal profiler Maggie O'Dell that pinpoints the true nature of the evil behind the killings—a revelation made all the more horrific when Morrelli's own nephew goes missing.
Maggie understands something else: the killer is enjoying himself, relishing his ability to stay one step ahead of her, making this case more personal by the hour. Because out there, watching, is a killer with a heart of pure and perfect evil.
Amazon.com Review:
Nick Morrelli is the Platte City, Nebraska, sheriff who must be smarter than he appears, since there's a framed Harvard law degree hanging on his wall. Not that appearances don't count. The reader is treated to a number of descriptions of his sexy, lady-killer looks and his charismatic effect on even the most hard-bitten woman character in this somewhat muddled, serial-killer thriller. Nick is investigating the kidnap-murders of two young Platte City boys when FBI profiler Maggie O'Dell shows up and all but takes over the investigation. Several years earlier, the former sheriff--Nick's father--capped his own career with the arrest of the last serial killer in the neighborhood, who abducted and tortured three boys in an eerily similar crime spree. When Antonio Morrelli returns from retirement to meddle in the investigation, and when Nick's own sister uses her connections to advance his career, Nick hardly raises an objection. And that's the central weakness of what would otherwise be a good, very first effort. --Jane Adams
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Rated by buyers 
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Unfortunately for some reason I didn't realise this was an earlier O'Dell installment which I hadn't already read, but thought it was a later novel featuring a different character. Sadly I was soon disillusioned as the world's stupidest profiler made her appearance all too quickly and I made the discovery that Kava's later novels - flawed as they might be - were actually far better than this generic and badly written plotted installment.
The slushy romance between Maggie and Nick was bad enough (why do a sheriff and a FBI profiler have to look like models?), the lazy romance magazine assumption that Maggie is entitled to lust after other men because her husband doesn't understand her. Or that the fact that the killer and his target are all to easy to identify. But far far worse was the lazy writing and the enormous credibility gaps in the plot - I don't mind suspension of disbelief but this was ridiculous! As others have pointed out, for such a supposedly brilliant FBI agent Maggie seems totally clueless about evidence or how to handle an investigation and Nick isn't any better. Why does no-one pick up on the fact that Greg ACTUALLY SPOKE TO THE KILLER on his mobile and try to get him to identify the voice? Why does Maggie ignore important new evidence from a crucial witness, conveniently allowing him to be bumped off before he can speak? But what sunk me completely was the part where a mother comes home - in the dark - and doesn't worry in the slightest that her son - who was playing ouside unattended hasn't come home - despite the fact that a serial killer is targeting small boys who look very much like the said son - has a glass of wine and falls asleep quite unconcerned!
As if she - or any other responsible mother in the neighbourhood - would have let the kid out of her sight after not one but TWO local children had been kidnapped and murdered!
This is lazy writing at its worst - apparently Kava can't be bothered to come up with a clever way a psychpath might snare his intended victim but just relies on readers being dumb enough to swallow anything she throws at them. Definitely the worst Kava book I have read so far
Rated by buyers 
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I read this book in two weekend evenings, and I can't help but feel like my time would have been better spent somewhere else.
The premise starts out well. Just months after a serial child killer is put to death, a new body turns up in his old stomping grounds, mangled in exactly the same way for which the condemned was convicted. A small town reacts with panic and anger, and the sheriff is way out of his depth. That's when a sexy FBI profiler steps in, hoping to save the day -- only to become part of the game herself when the killer zeroes in on her one great weakness.
The problem is, I can't help but feel like I've read this story somewhere before. There's a distinctly assembly-line feel to this, like a markedly more grown-up Nancy Drew novel. How the characters talk, how they interact with their context, the sexual tension between the two leads: it all feels like well-trod ground. Even the subplot, dealing with the profiler's trauma at the hands of a playfully sadistic mass murderer, feels cribbed from the blueprints of a Thomas Harris novel. I kept expecting someone on the other end of the phone line to purr "Hello, Clarice."
One example should suffice to show my major problem with the book. Both the leading man, Nick Morelli, and the leading lady, Maggie O'Dell, are improbably good-looking and charismatic people, in the noir literature tradition, and the sexual tension between them is a major thread through the book. But every time it comes up, no matter whose point of view we're following at that moment, it's described with the same term: "electricity." Over and over and over again, this same single word is supposed to convey the complexity of human sexuality, driving it home like a piston on an engine.
Would it have been so difficult for the author to change that up a bit? Let me give her some suggestions, in case she decides to do a revised edition. Even if she wants to stick with the concept of lust as electricity, she has a range of words available to her to convey that idea. Spark, charge, voltage, current, shock, bolt, lightning. Also consider heat, friction, and magnetism. Would that have been so difficult?
This book was a real disappointment to me. And it pains me to say it, because I really enjoyed Kava's novel One False Move. This one is just so ordinary, so mechanical, that when I got to the end, it left me feeling like I had been chasing my own tail for two nights. This was a poor use of two good evenings I could have spent reading something more challenging -- or, as a thought, drafting my own thriller novel.
I can't say this book was bad, but I just can't bring myself to recommend it either. Keep shopping, dear reader, this isn't what you're looking for.
Rated by buyers 
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The writing was really good, and I would give it a 5 star rating, except the ending was really disappointing. It is quite obvious that it's a complete set up for another book.
Rated by buyers -
Do you want to read a book written for those without imagination? This surely has to be it. Cliched characters are ineptly drawn, and following a formula even Hollywood is tiring of: a tall, dark, handsome playboy sheriff, and a shapely, gorgeous FBI agent. Of course there's romance in the air!
Only the bad guys are ugly - or at least I presume so, as they don't get much of a description at all. But then, nor does anything else, resulting in a poor sense of place. Many authors go out of their way to give a sense of place, but not Kava. Contrast Kava's work with that of John Connolly whose prose is delightful and vivid; or that of Crais, whose work is a little sparser than Connolly's and the difference will be profound.
It was a labor, getting through this book, with repeated instances of point-of-view changes, often within a paragraph. In one place, it wasn't even possible to tell whom the author was referring-to as the paragraph contained references to several characters, all addressed as "she".
The book reads like a very first draft, and the lack of careful (or it seems at times, any,) editing is obvious. Kava likes to use impactful verbs, but really, three instances of "grabbed" in the space of five lines demonstrates a vocabulary most high-school students would surpass and a quality of writing that just as many would turn up their noses at.
It would take little research to discover that "goals" are scored in soccer, not "points." But that too, seems beyond Kava's limited expertise.
Some readers spurn genre fiction as demonstrating too much telling and not enough showing. This novel can be held up as an example of all that those critics wish to bleat about.
I am so glad I didn't by this book, instead borrowing it from a library, as I wouldn't even want it on any of my shelves. I'd rather reserve that space for worthwile books by authors who craft - rather than draft - their prose. This book is now back in the library, and the money I would have spent on it remains firmly in my wallet.
Rated by buyers -
Alex Kava writes a strong, church related mystery with Maggie O'Dell being the lynchpin that holds the whole story together.
The only element that stresses credulity is Kava's sexual innuendoes between Maggie and Nick( each brush is stunning, each
accidental touch electric and hinting of dirty, dirty thoughts.)
And she slips these in every chapter the two share.
Ignore these silly bumps in the night and you have an entertaining novel. I just ordered "A Necessary Evil"...
Let's hope the heat between Nick and Maggie has settled into a serious affection.
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