Jonathan Nasaw - Fear Itself

Injecting fresh potency into the phrase "scared to death," the wickedly talented author of The Girls He Adored has delivered a spine-chilling follow-up introducing an unforgettable villain who confronts his victims with their phobias.

The charmingly disheveled FBI Special Agent E. L. Pender is strapping on his non-regulation calfskin shoulder holster one last time. Last day on the job, showing the ropes to his eager successor, Investigative Specialist Linda Abruzzi.

Then a letter from Dorie Bell arrives at FBI headquarters. Last year Dorie attended a phobia disorders convention in Las Vegas. Since then, three attendees have died under suspicious circumstances. A man with fear of heights jumped from the nineteenth floor of a building. A woman with fear of blood managed to cut her own wrists in the bathtub. A third victim with fear of suffocation was found in her bathtub, with a plastic bag over her head.

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In the beginning Nasaw introduces Linda Abruzzi, the one taking Pender's place in the Liaison Support, because he really is happy and can't wait for his official retirement. Linda isn't happy about taking his outlaw post because besides the pain she feels 24/7 it reminds her that it was this or leaving the FBI, which graciously already degraded her from Special Agent to Investigative Specialist.

In this book Pender shows himself from another side, one much more personal than in the first novel The Girls He Adored. Nevertheless his reputation hasn't changed much, he's still known of being the worst dressed agent.

So when Pender receives a letter from Dori Bell, suffering from a terrible fear of masks, about friends that officially committed suicide untypical for persons with phobia, he leaves a possible investigation to Linda and takes off for a golfing vacation.
Didn't he know his vacation spot isn't far away from Dori's home.

So things come together and when Pender visits Dori there is an instant connection between them. She seems to be very much like him and not to mind his clothing and Pender's just Pender-Mr-Cool from the outside. But then Dori's already in the killer's focus and is captured the next day.

She knows who he is. She knows she did tell Pender about the convention she visited and that Simon Child's has been the main contributor moneywise but will he be able to rescue her before she is killed by Child's who enjoys torturing his victims with their fears until they ultimately die.

A lot of people will die and already have died through Simon Child's hands and he always seems to be one step further of the people chasing him.

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The sad thing with this book is, that the whole plot somehow is there but that it isn't executed well. I missed the investigation. Instead it seems Pender always knew where to look and what to look for. Unfortunately reality isn't that simple.
I find it really sweet to read about Pender and Dori which seems to be a perfect match, complementing each other but other than that I really don't have much to say about this book.
It is one of those you read and pretty soon forget about it.

Rating:

Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Atria (January 7, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0743446518
ISBN-13: 978-0743446518

Jonathan Nasaw - The Girls He Adored

Call him Max. But don't shake his hand. Don't get too close at all. Because Max isn't just Max. He's a lot of people, a twisted collection of personalities struggling to find a way out. One of those personalities is vicious, Insatiable. A man with a talent for the blade and a hunger for women with strawberry blond hair.

Max latest querry, Dr. Irene Cogan, is about to learn two things firsthand: what makes Max tick, and what happened to The Girls He Adored.

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Psychiatrist Dr. Irene Cogan is called to evaluate the mental state of a man who's got captured killing the young woman on his passenger seat in a routine traffic control. Nobody knows who he is or where he´d come from.
Soon she discovers that the man in front of her isn't just a man, he's at least six men and a child. There are Max, Christopher, Mose, Kinch, Ish, Peter and Lyssy hidden in one fast thinking and moving mind with such enormous amount of intelligence and skills.

While Dr. Cogan interviews the subject the doghoused FBI Special Agent E. L. Pender feels for the first time in over 10 years they finally might have captured a serial killer nicknamed as Casey. Casey's victims are strawberry blonds just like the disemboweled girl the unknown subject in jail killed.

High in the Cascade Mountains of southern Oregon a strawberry blond haired woman sits on her porch with a sewing basket full of separate reddish blond strands.

When "Casey" escapes from jail he knows Dr. Cogan might be able to help him control all his alters just a bit better and that her hair's just been colored frosty blond. There is a glimmer of reddish under the blond. He kidnaps her and begins his, and now her's as well, journey home.

Pender's fishing for clues. So far police and FBI have been able to follow Casey just because he left dead bodies every now and then but his final destination's hidden in the dark. When he finds Dr. Cogans taped interview sessions he finds the one clue that might be able to direct him in the right direction and the chase begins.

While I liked the strong beginning of the book very much, it got pretty plain and thin, somehow boring, around the middle. Reading Casey's story of how he'd become what he was wore me out, couldn't really grab me. In the end I wasn't surprised about the ending as it was more then predictable.
Nasaw did a very good job to explain what Dissociative Identity Disorder is but clearly failed to create a mystery.

Rating:
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Mass Market Paperback: 448 pages
Publisher: Pocket Star (February 1, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0671787454
ISBN-13: 978-0671787455