Kim Pfaffenroth - Dying To Live: A Novel of Life Among The Undead

Jonah Caine, a lone survivor in a zombie-infested world, struggles to understand the apocalypse in which he lives. Unable to find a moral or sane reason for the horror that surrounds him, he is overwhelmed by violence and insignificance.

After wandering for months, Jonah's lonely existence dramatically changes when he discovers a group of survivors. Living in a museum-turned-compound, they are led jointly by Jack, an ever-practical and efficient military man, and Milton, a mysterious, quizzical prophet who holds a strange power over the dead. Both leaders share Jonah's anguish over the brutality of their world, as well as his hope for its beauty. Together with others, they build a community that reestablishes an island of order and humanity surrounded by relentless ghouls.

But this newfound peace is short-lived, as Jonah and his band of refugees clash with another group of survivors who remind them that the undead are not the only-nor the most grotesque-horrors they must face.

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It has almost been a year since the Apocalypse stroke as flesh eating zombies.
Those who survived hide behind barricades, those who don't have a hiding place became killing machines, avoiding towns and the night. The incurious zombies rarely look up so a higher platform to sleep on almost seems like a piece of heaven for one night.
Jonah is one of those who came to find his family without success. Since then he adapted to survival on the street and learnt how to keep the zombies at bay.
Rescued from a dangerous situation Jonah is taken in by a larger group of survivors. Protected by a huge river and the museums gates they built up a small community with new but mostly humane rules. Their leader Milton is a "half-infected" who wasn't bitten by a zombie but by zombie rodents that were used for testing the disease.

With his bright character Milton dreams of rebuilding society within their gates where food and security can be taken for granted.

It is a long way the community has to go to archive the goal piece by piece. Jonah is an asset to the community as well as ex-military Jack, his girl-friend Sarah, ex dental-hygienist turned into doctor and Tanya as well as young "Popcorn" who don't feel fear but lots of rage.

In their quest to find more survivors Jonah, Tanya and Popcorn are taken hostage by ex-prisoners who survived in their prison by eating venison and rotten peaches. There is only one person who can rescue them out of this situation but does he value the safety of the community more than the lives of three community members ?

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Dying to Live is a bit like the common zombie book with some nice add-ons. It is intellectual not only because the author used Dante and Shakespeare but also uses them in his dialogues between Jonah and Milton.
What I liked about Dying to Live is that is was approachable and humane. Pfaffenroth looks behind what happened and looks up to the future without resting on the common goal of building up a new society with empty phrases. He asks for the why more than once and he delivers.

I read the book in one day and picked up its continuation Dying to Live: Life Sentence up directly after closing the novel.

David Wellington was right to to say Dying to Live is a thinking man's zombie novel.

Rating:
Visit Kim Pfaffenroth.

Paperback: 216 pages
Publisher: Permuted Press (April 1, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 097897073X
ISBN-13: 978-0978970734

Alafair Burke - Judgment Calls (Samantha Kincaid Series, Book 1)

A Judgment In Question
After three years on the job in Portland's Drug and Vice Division, Deputy District Attorney Samantha Kincaid gets what she wants: her first case with the Major Crimes team.
Kendra Martin, a 13-year-old runaway, has been found drugged, viciously assaulted, and left for dead in the Columbia River Gorge. Despite pressures to kick the case to assault, Samantha goes for attempted murder. Unfortunately the girl's story isn't jelling. Then again, neither is the alibi of the suspect she ID'd, a low-life who insists he's innocent. One thing is certain. Kendra knows the streets better than Vice- and Samantha's following her down every last one of them to crack the case.

A Life On The Line
But the road to the truth is more dangerous than Samantha dreamed, leading to an earlier death-penalty conviction, a teenage prostitution ring, and threats to Samantha's own life. When the possibility of a serial killer enters the fray, it sends Samantha's trail into a tailspin, and tests her judgment - in both her professional and personal life - to very death.

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Samantha Kincaid has been working as a Deputy District Attorney for the last three years when she takes on a case that might make or break her. 13-year-old Kendra Martin is a heroin addict who prostitutes to support her addiction. She has been found sexually assaulted and left for dead. Despite the victim's circumstances she delivers a quite good witness statement and is able to identify one of the two culprits. The man she identified is Frank Derringer, who has been released on parole after sexually assaulting a young girl. His fingerprint is found on Kendra's purse, his car suspiciously has been overpainted and overhauled from the inside the day after Kendra's assault.
It seems to Samantha that she's got the case in the bag and Derringer might as well admit of what he did. Unfortunately during a fast trial the defense smashes each and every evidence Samantha has gathered and even opens up to compare Kendra's assault to a case a few years ago where the suspects have been trialed and sent onto death row.

With her personal romantic relationship to an in both cases involved detective Samantha is taken from the case but her mind doesn't rest. What is it that she didn't notice the first time around ? Something is nagging in the back of her brain and she has to figure it out fast before Frank Derringer and presumably his brother Derrick get away.

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One thing is for sure, readers who read Burke's two novels of the Ellie Hatcher series (Dead Connection and Angel's Tips) almost won't recognize the same author in the first few chapters of this book. It gave me a hard time to focus on all the maneuverings around the case. However after the first initial "shock" I got into it. As always what Burke writes makes sense to the reader and she closes the book with no open questions.
Characters however felt surprisingly short which might as well be the result of the first person telling by Samantha herself. Being the first published book of hers I certainly cut her some slack and found the book quite good for a first publication.

Knowing Alafair Burke I'll sure read the following books in the Kincaid series. I'll trust they will be better than her debut novel.

Rating:
Visit Alafair Burke.

Mass Market Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks (May 4, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312997205
ISBN-13: 978-0312997205

J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Year 2)

Ever since Harry Potter had come home for the summer, the Dursleys' had been so mean and hideous that all Harry wanted was to get back at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. But just as he's packing his bags, Harry receives a warning from a strange, impish creature who says that if Harry returns to Hogwarts, disaster will strike.

And strike it does. For in Harry's second year at Hogwarts, fresh torments and horrors arise, including an outrageously stuck-up new professor and a spirit who haunts the girls' bathroom. But then the real trouble begins - someone is turning Hogwarts students to stone. Could it be Draco Malfoy, a more poisonous rival then ever ? Could it possibly be Hagrid, whose mysterious past is finally told ? Or could it be the one everyone at Hogwarts most suspects ... Harry Potter himself !

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It is Harry Potter's 12th birthday and it is his summer vacation with his dreaded family, the Dursleys. Nothing has changed and they still despise everything that has to do with magic. So Harry finds himself locked in a room with bars in front of the only window and a small cat door for his small food deliveries. He wonders what the little house-elf Dobby meant by warning him to go back to Hogwarts school. What did he mean something terrible is about to happen ?
Upon his decision to return back to Hogwarts and freed by his friends the Weasley boys, Ron, Fred and George, all literally seems to go wrong: Ron and Harry can't enter the hidden gate to the train platform, Harry breaks his arm and other small bothersome things hapen.
The annoying new teacher in Defense against the Dark Arts doesn't seem to be that clever either. He's famous because he wrote a lot of books about his adventures but than everytime he uses his magic something seems to go wrong. He's seeking Harry's presence which bothers Harry even more.

When the school is shocked at the finding of the petrified Mrs. Norris, the housekeeper's cat, and a message announcing the Chamber of Secrets has been opened again, it leaves our three friends Hermione, Ron and Harry puzzled. Especially because at the same time Harry heard a voice no one else was able to hear.

When more students are found petrified, Harry rescues a student from a snake attack and learns he can speak Parseltongue, the students non "pureblood" students feel threatened by Harry because the legend says that the Chamber was built by Salazar Slytherin and his heir will be able to open the Chamber of Secrets and unleash the horror within. Slytherin was one of the rare wizards able to speak Parseltongue.

Harry and his friends are now pressured to find the Secret within the Chamber and do whatever they can to protect those that don't come of a pure wizard family.

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What makes this book very charming is that it continues where the last novel left us: Harry heading of for summer vacation with the Dursleys. No surprise thing haven't changed in the Dursleys opinion about magic but quite shocking that they lock the poor boy away.
Surprisingly I found a lot messages in this book. They went from child abuse, to obnoxiousness and very bad racism, leaving young readers certainly with questions parents should not be shy to answer. The point of racism has such a bad taste it almost made me sick but as life is, people deal with this every day and so this might be a good time to introduce our children into what is right and what is wrong. The way the topic is introduced to the reader is very bold and straight forward which I found is very nice.

Overall I found the book fun to read and Harry grows on me. I'll continue to read the other books in time.

Read my review to Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone (Book 1).

Rating:

Visit J. K. Rowling.

Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books (November 1, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0439554896
ISBN-13: 978-0439554893

James Patterson / Michael Ledwidge - Run For Your Life

A spree killer passes brutal judgment.
A calculating murderer who calls himself the Teacher is taking on New York City, slaughtering the powerful and the arrogant. Everyone is his potential student - from the loudmouthed girl on her cell phone to the city's snooty upper crust.
His message to them is clear: remember your manners or suffer the consequences ! For some, it seems that the rich are finally getting what they deserve. For New York's elite, it's a call to terror.

No chance for redemption.
There is only one man in the NYPD who can tackle such a high-profile case: Detective Michael Bennett. For anyone else, the pressure would be overwhelming, but Mike is ready to step up - taking care of his ten children has prepared him for the job. As the media frenzy escalates, all of Mike's children fall victim to a virulent flu bug - almost as challenging an assignment for Bennett as tracking down the killer.


One man struggles to save a city.
A secret pattern emerges in the Teacher's lessons, leaving detective Bennett just a few precious hours to save New York from the greatest disaster in its history.

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New York City homicide detective Michael Bennett is assigned to a new case at the worst time. With his wife's death the responsibility to take her care of their 10 adopted children is huge enough and now they all fall ill with a terrible flu, vomiting all over their place. Now he is supposed to catch a killer who's pattern doesn't make sense and always strikes at high profile places.

He calls himself the Teacher and his pupils are those who flaunt things, wealth and beauty. The penalty for obnoxiousness is death and you'd better listen to him and don't forget your manners.

With the killer getting bolder and shooting a beautiful stewardess in broad daylight, leaving a hotel lounge full of witnesses the Teacher is identified and his wife and two daughters found dead in their home. Peeling layer after layer Bennett is finally able to uncover the killers pattern and does everything to protect the only next possible victim.

But Bennett hasn't done his investigations without forgetting his own manners which might just turn out to be a terrible mistake.

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I actually really liked this book. For me it seems that co-writing with another writer makes Patterson's book more approachable for me than his other novels. Patterson readers know of Patterson own pattern of crazy psycho killers running through a town - therefore this book doesn't hold any surprises at all. But still the Ledwidge influence gave this book just a tad more than the old story usually offers.
Michael Bennett seems to be the average man struggling with his family issues and missing his wife. He's got personality as far as being a family father goes by mopping vomit off the floor and having some jelly on his sleeves. The cop side of him got a bit short. He actually isn't as striking as the books description does make him seem. The investigation part is just too short or better, it lacks the investigation at all. It seems more like the normal police procedure unravels the killer's identity and Michael's share is the big finale.

In the end I liked it and read through it fast. I wouldn't say I was vowed but actually enjoyed the family parts.

Rating:

Visit Michael Ledwidge.
Visit James Patterson.

Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (February 2, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316018740
ISBN-13: 978-0316018746

S. J. Bolton - Sacrifice

Tora Hamilton is an outsider at her new home on the rocky, wind-swept Shetland Islands, a hundred miles from northeastern tip of Scotland. Though her husband grew up here, it's the first time he's been back in twenty years.

Digging in the peat on their new property, Tora unearths a human body, at first glance a centuries-old bog body, interesting but not uncommon. But realizing that the body is in fact much newer, that the woman's heart has been cut out and that she was killed withing a few days of bearing a child, Tora, herself an obstetrician, becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to her -- even when police, her colleagues, and eventually her husband warn her against getting involved.
Reading town records and researching local lore, Tora discovers a disturbing link to ancient Shetland legend and uncovers a collection of deep, dark secrets - the kind of secrets worth killing for.

- I don't want to get too deep into the book itself because the books description already tells all the main plotlines minus a few very exciting ones.
For the reader who likes to not only read mysteries settled in the U. S. Sacrifice is an exciting and suspenseful must read with a lot of myths beautifully bound into the plot.
With its twist and turns the reader never quite figures who's the villain and how much people are really involved in the one dead body Tora discovers. It might be a whole hospital or just a few, the whole island or just a particular group of men and knowing women.
The plot is complex and can only be recommended.

S. j. Bolton will publish her second book available in the U. S. in May 2009 and. Its title is Awakening.

Rating:
Visit S. J. Bolton.

Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur; 1st edition (May 27, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312381131
ISBN-13: 978-0312381134

Scott Sigler - Infected

Across America a mysterious disease is turning ordinary people into raving, paranoid murderers who inflict brutal horrors on strangers, themselves, and even their own families.

Working under the government's shroud of secrecy, CIA operative Dew Phillips crisscrosses the country trying in vain to capture a live victim. With only decomposing corpses for clues, CDC epidemiologist Margaret Montoya races to analyze the science behind these deadly contagion. She discovers that these killers all have one thing in common -- they have been contaminated by a bioengineered parasite, shaped by a complexity far beyond the limits of known science.

Meanwhile Perry Dawsey -- a hulking former football star now resigned to life as a cubicle-bound desk jockey -- awakens one morning to find several mysterious welts growing on his body. Soon Perry finds himself acting and thinking strangely, hearing voices ... he is infected.

The fate of the human race may well depend on the bloody war Perry must wage with his own body, because the parasites want something from him, something that goes beyond mere murder.

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Who doesn't remember Sinatra's song I've got you under my skin (I've got you deep in the heart of me.So deep in my heart, that you're really a part of me).
Something similar feels Perry Dawson when he develops first a rash and later triangle shaped growths with eyes. It gets worse when he hears voices in his head and these voices begin to communicate with him, demanding and wanting to be fed. Struggling with the voices that become a part of him he tries his best to withstand their demands but he gets weaker with each passing hour.

Dew Philipps has sworn revenge to the person responsible for the death of his much younger partner. The person who killed his partner is dead but was infected with something the CIA and the leading epidemiologist Margaret Montoya don't know much about. They know the infected humans have turned into paranoid killing machines but their dead bodies always decompose faster as the remains can be gathered or processed for further examination. They need a live example to learn the secret about this disease if it is one and feel their wishes fulfilled when Perry sends an email to a website set up by the CIA to find more infected humans.

No one knows yet that the seeds fell from heaven, and invaded human bodies across America. That these humans have become hosts to something so finely engineered that the seeds slowly overwrite the human DNA and create something foreign to make the bodies their own incubator.

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It took me a bit to get into the story and the writers style but I got largely excited how the story around Perry Dawson unfolded and how precise Scott Sigler described what happened to Perry and how he tried to get rid of the triangles on his body.
The reality of what happens in this novel is scary, the used science even more scarier.
I was able to put myself into Perry's character so easily, first for feeling sympathy when he began scratching himself (who hasn't had a rash in his life ?) and later acted to the voices demands in his head.

Sigler is a new author for me and I can't wait to read the continuation of Infected, named Contagious. Worthwhile when you enjoy science fiction and aren't afraid of developing a rash.

Also it needs to be mentioned that the title of certain chapters were just hilarious. :-)

Sigler offers his books as podcasts free on his website or you can also visit randomhouse and listen to the whole book online.

Rating:
Visit Scott Sigler.

Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Crown (April 1, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307406105
ISBN-13: 978-0307406101

Howard Dully and Charles Fleming - My Lobotomy, A Memoir

At twelve, Howard Dully was guilty of the same crimes as other boys his age: he was moody and messy, rambunctious with his brothers, contrary just to prove a point and perpetually at odds with his parents. Yet somehow, this normal boy became one of the youngest people on whom Dr. Walter Freeman performed his barbaric transorbital -or ice pick- lobotomy.
Abandoned by is family withing a year of the surgery, Howard spent his teen years in mental institutions, his twenties in jail, and his thirties in a bottle. It wasn't until he was in his forties that Howard began to pull his life to together. But even as he began to live the "normal" life he had been denied, Howard struggled with on e question: Why ?

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In 1998 Howard Dully began the journey into his past to find the answer to what happened to him and would be life stigmatizing and changing forever. The secret kept hidden from him until he held the answer in a file named DULLY, HOWARD in his own hands.

Howard was born a normal child with a loving mother who died at an early age. His father, lacking general affection, remarried and Howard's life got even more complicated. The new mother didn't like him and didn't want him. She began picking on him, spanked him and told lies about him so that the father in the evening would spank him some more. He was singled out, had to eat alone and lived a life in fear of his stepmother.
He was 12 years old when the stepmother contacted Dr. Walter Freeman, the famous but controversial surgeon performing the lobotomy. After several talks with the stepmother (and Howard) the doctor concluded that Howard was a normal boy but performed the lobotomy anyway. The file contradicts that Howard suffered from schizophrenia.

But for his stepmother the gruesome surgery wasn't enough. She still said he was a violent child and she could not live under the same roof with him and his brothers. Howard had to go - and he did. From juvie hall to mental hospitals to an asylum for the insane - all the while being told by doctors that he is a normal boy but that there is no other place for him to go since home wasn't a possibility for him.

As a child living with truly insane people and troubled kids he stood true to himself but developed what was unavoidable: he became delinquent as soon as he was given to a halfway house. He lacked basic awareness for himself, had never learned to take care of himself and soon was given back to the asylum for the insane where he stayed a few years. At one point he couldn't be kept in the asylum any longer as being diagnosed as healthy.
He was released on his own, soon married and became a father, dreaming the dream of having a family but it didn't work out with him being drunk and drugged all the time. Things slowly changed when he met his second wife Barbara and a second child one the way when he decided he had to get his act together and become responsible.

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I began reading the book with totally different expectations which is what happens when you decide to read a book without reading the inside flap of the cover. I only read what stood on the back of the book which mainly focused on the topic and title of the book: The Lobotomy.
So when I learned the book actually has one chapter concentrating on before and after the lobotomy I thought about the purpose of the book. I decided to put my expectations away and go with the story.
Howard's story is one of many and then some more. The whole story of how easily it was decided to perform the dangerous surgery and how easily people around Howard were manipulated by his stepmother is terrible and it is no wonder this boy became a handful. Despite of him more then once writing he doesn't remember that much. No child is able to develop normally in a surrounding like he did. No child is able to develop normally in surroundings he lived in later either. He practically grew up surrounded by really insane people, troubled kids and teenagers and he never experienced love since his birth mother died. One has to ask how he managed to not get into more trouble than he did. Alcohol abuse, drug abuse, bad checks, ... .

I felt outraged by what happened to a child and that there was no protection either by a "father", professionals or the government.

The last chapter in the book was powerful and even answered my questions as of why this book was written. As Dully states himself: Where were the authorities ? With Freeman not being a licensed psychiatrist allowing him to diagnose the boy schizophrenic and perform the surgery, the missing medical standard. The doctors that examined Howard, those who knew he was going to have a lobotomy despite their conclusion he was normal.
He talks about today's doctors who are allowed to diagnose depression or bipolar illness in children, prescribing powerful medications leaving the parents to decide if they want a to consult another doctor for a second opinion.

First and foremost he was a victim of unloving parents and authorities who didn't care to give a child and growing teenager the protection it deserved. He hid behind the lobotomy only recognizing later, that the lobotomy was the explanation to everything that went wrong in his life. That he hid behind it and had to stop being the victim. In the end he is lucky he survived the whole procedure. Many did not or were heavily brain damaged.

Rating:

More about Howard Dully's journey:
My Lobotomy - Howard Dully's journey (NPR radio program, upper left under the title)

Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Three Rivers Press; Reprint edition (August 26, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307381277
ISBN-13: 978-0307381279

John Grisham - The Associate

Kyle McAvoy grew up in his father's small-town law office in York, Pennsylvania. He excelled in college, was elected editor-in-chief of The Yale Law Journal, and his future has limitless potential.

But Kyle has a secret, a dark one, an episode from college that he has tried to forget. The secret, though, falls into the hands of the wrong people, and Kyle is forced to take a job he doesn't want—even though it's a job most law students can only dream about.

Three months after leaving Yale, Kyle becomes an associate at the largest law firm in the world, where, in addition to practicing law, he is expected to lie, steal, and take part in a scheme that could send him to prison, if not get him killed.

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Kyle McAvoy is a young, intelligent lad with all the right values inherited by his father and his small-town law office in Pennsylvania. Since early childhood he'd been dreaming of becoming a lawyer, taking his father as an example. His decision to become a community lawyer earning less money but doing good for the less fortunate has long been made and he can't wait to start as soon as he's made it through the bar. After that the same doors already open for him, will still be open.
His plans however are smashed into 1000 pieces when he is threatened to be exposed as being present at a crime scene where a young girl was raped while unconscious.
Five years ago Kyle was like many other students: he drank, he participated in parties and he had girls who were willing. The video unfortunately places him in the same room like three others and a girl. While Kyle and a friend were heavily drunk and placed and passed out in front of the TV, two other friends had some fun with a girl know as being an easy girl. When she passed out they raped her.
Now Kyle has to decide to do as he is told or endanger his whole future and decide about his friends future as well.

An alias, Bennie Wright, wants him to accept a job offer with one of the biggest law firms in the U.S., Scully and Pershing whose client Trylon Aeronauticts fights with another leading company over a multi billion dollar contract with the Air Force.
With all the technology and secrets involved, the case is handled as the biggest and highest valued case in the history and so is its protection.
While Kyle has to work himself into the trust of the litigation partners from the bottom up, the pressure on him is held by Wright. Fearing for his life when one of the two rapists is found dead with a bullet in his head Kyle knows his live is as much in danger as his dead friends life was.
Opportuniy and a way out of his misery opens when due to arguments a few of the litigation partners and associates seperate from the firm and Kyle is assigned to the Trylon case.

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John Grisham's new thriller is just as good as his other legal thrillers except that the idea doesn't feel new to the reader. The story, the whole plotline about espionage, has already been written one way or the other by many other well known writers and probably by Grisham himself in The Firm. (I haven't read The Firm.)
However, the book is nicely written and conclusive. At some points I thought it could have been more racy or exciting but overall it kept me reading.
The ending unfortunately was uneventful and a huge bore. It leaves the reader with too much questions.

Rating:
Visit John Grisham.

Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Doubleday (January 27, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385517831
ISBN-13: 978-0385517836

Alan Jacobson - The 7th Victim

The Dead Eyes killer lurks in the backyard of the FBI's famed Behavioral Analysis Unit. His brutal murders, unlike any others previously encountered, confound the local task force, despite the gifted skills by Special Agent Karen Vail, the first female ever promoted to the profiling unit. But along with her keen insight, she brings considerable personal and professional baggage--both of which threaten to derail their investigation.
As the Dead Eyes killer grows bolder by the unit's inability to stop him, Vail discovers that the seventh victim holds the key to all that stirs this killer...the key that will unlock secrets too painful for Vail to bear. Secrets that threaten to destroy her, that could bring down her storied and promising career. For Karen Vail, the truth rests at the heart of a lie. And uncovering it might just get her killed.

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FBI Special Agent Karen Vail works the case of the Dead Eyes killer, who's on a killing spree performing grotesque killings on young brunettes. Despite her troubled private life, her divorce from an abusive husband, her worries about her son Jonathan and an old and sick mother, she doesn't seem to make any progress in finding the killer without evidence that might lead to his identity.
By accident she learns that the woman who raised her is not her biological mother she confronts her today high positioned mother with her identity only to learn a few hours later that she was the killers 7th target and "Dead Eyes" seems to be interested in Karen as well.

Desperately searching for the connection between herself, her dead mother and the killer she needs to uncover her past that seems to be buried in the mind of her aunt who raised her. Only thing is, she's got Alzheimer's.
Karen's journey into the past leads her towards the killer but nothing she could ever have imagined is about to reveal.

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Despite all the positive reviews about The 7th Victim I found myself in a more critical spot. At times I bored myself through the book hoping to find the excitement on the next page. Sometimes the author made the cut due to on the cover mentioned 7 year study in the profiling unit but sometimes it just didn't sound reasonable to me or just common sense to come to the same conclusion as the profiler did.

The book has certain chapters about the killer and his past but ultimately they gave me nothing and I couldn't find the purpose of those except maybe as page filler.

I hated the ending which one might imagine quite interesting (especially considering the 7 year research the author did) but ultimately fell flat and predictable.

One might argue if real life studies might have influenced the ending but when writing fiction it doesn't mean the ending has to be unspectacular.

Rating: Stern:
Visit Alan Jacobson.

Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Vanguard Press; 1 edition (September 23, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1593154941
ISBN-13: 978-1593154943