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