Lisa Jackson - Malice

The scent is unmistakable - gardenias, sweet and delicate, the same perfume that his beautiful first wife, Jennifer, always wore. Opening his eyes in the hospital room where he's recovering from an accident, New Orleans detective Rick Bentz sees her standing in the doorway. Then Jennifer blows him a kiss and disappears. But it couldn't have been Jennifer. She died twelve years ago.

Once out of the hospital, Bentz begins to see Jennifer everywhere, haunting ad taunting him, then vanishing without a trace. Could she still be alive ? But it was Bentz who identified Jennifer's body body after her horrible car wreck, and there had been no question in his mind that it was her crumpled form behind the wheel, her clothes, her wedding ring. He's never doubted it until now. He can't tell his new wife, Olivia, about the sightings or his secret fear that he's losing his mind, even though he knows she suspects something is wrong. But Olivia is also hiding a secret.

When a copy of Jennifer's death certificate arrives in the mail, emblazoned with a red question mark, Bentz follows the postmark trail to Los Angeles, returning to the painful memories he's tried so hard to forget, and straight into a killer's web. Reconnecting with his former LAPD colleagues, Bentz begins to piece together Jennifer's last days, but each new discovery only serves as a chilling reminder of how little he really knew about his first wife. Then the murders begin, each victim a part of Jennifer's past, each grisly corpse pointing to Bentz as the prime suspect.

Someone's been waiting patiently, silently. Someone who knows exactly what happened that night twelve years ago and has been anticipating Bentz's every move. Soon it will be Bentz's turn to suffer for his sins. But he won't be the only one made to pay the ultimate price. For a diabolical killer has now made Olivia the prime target.

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Rick Bentz left LAPD 12 years ago after a fatal shooting where he shot a teenage in self defense and his wife's horrible car accident that left him a widower to raise his daughter.
Today he is happily married to Olivia and lives and works in New Orleans. But lately, since he woke up from a short coma, he's been seeing his dead wife. It soon becomes clear that someone, his dead wife or not, wants him to return to Los Angeles.
The situation spirals downwards when former friends of Jennifer are found killed just after Rick talked to them about his dead wife and her secrets.

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I'm not at all familiar with Jackson's New Orleans series or the character Rick Bentz so I won't speak about character development but rather about a gripping thriller with only sometimes too much words to wrap it up. Malice for me felt very conclusive but had its moments when I thought nobody would go such difficult ways just for revenge.
Overall I found this book entertaining and finished it fast. Unfortunately the reader assumes too fast who's the culprit.

Rating:
Visit Lisa Jackson.

Hardcover: 432 pages
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corporation; (April 1, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0758211848
ISBN-13: 978-0758211842

Lisa Jackson - Left To Die

Nothing's more terrifying...
One by one, the victims are carefully captured, toyed with, then subjected to a slow and agonizing death. Piece by piece, his exquisite plan takes shape.
The police can't yet see the beauty in his work -- but soon very soon, they will...

Than being left alone...
In the lonely woods around Grizzly Falls, Montana, four bodies have been discovered. Detectives Selena Alvarez and Regan Pescoli have been hoping for career-making case, but this nightmare. Even with the FBI involved, Selena and Regan have nothing to go on but a killer's cryptic notes, and the unsettling knowledge that there is much more worse to come...

To die...
When Jilian Rivers opens her eyes, she's trapped in a mangled car. Then a stranger, claiming to be a trail guide named Zane MacGregor, pries her free. Though she's grateful, something about him sets Jilian on edge. And if she knew what lay out there in the woods of Montana, she'd be truly terrified. Because someone is waiting...watching...poised to strike and make Jilian the next victim...

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Jilian Rivers receives alarming messages via phone and email, that her long believed dead husband, Aaron, is still alive, living a good live with half a million dollars he stole over 10 years ago.
Alarmed she's beginning the journey to the town the letter was sent from when her front tire is shot in the middle of nowhere with a snow storm coming up. Injured she lies in her car when a stranger frees her.

Lately there have been women found dead in the woods around Grizzly Falls. The killer's MO is always the same: the front tire is shot and the car crashed. The women found dead have all been tended to. Their wounds were stitched or taped and they all seemed to be of a good health when they were tied to a tree in the woods. Slowly freezing to death.
Detectives Selena Alvarez and Regan Pescoli have squat to go on. No evidence left with the women, no evidence left with the sooner or later discovered cars. The only message left by the killer is a letter with the initials of the victims written on it and a star carved above the head of the women.

Jilian read about the dead women and now finds herself in a frightening situation: She wakes up in a cozy cabin, her wounds tended to and at the mercy of a men, she doesn't know anything about.
There is something about this man and she doesn't know if she can trust or believe him at all. In the end she doesn't have much choice but waits for the moment in which she can break free.

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At times I thought this is one of Lisa Jackson's best books until I read the last few pages and discovered the book has an open end. The author announces the sequel will be published in August 2009 with the title Chosen To Die. My thoughts were she's got to be kidding leaving us readers here without any closure.
Without spoiling the book too much, it will be about one of the two detectives who the author thinks is an interesting person.
Unfortunately I don't feel the same way and couldn't find anything special about that. Nor do I want to read the same story all over again.
However, the rest of the roughly about 480 pages deserves a recommendation.

Rating:
Visit Lisa Jackson.

Mass Market Paperback: 484 pages
Publisher: Zebra (August 1, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1420102761
ISBN-13: 978-1420102765

Lisa Jackson - Lost Souls

Twenty-seven-year-old Kristi Bentz is lucky to be alive. Not many people her age have nearly died twice at the hands of a serial killer, and lived to tell about it.
Her dad, New Orleans detective, Rick Bentz, wants Kristi to stay in New Orleans and out of danger. But if anything, Kristi's experiences have made her even more fascinated by the mind of the serial killer. She hasn't given up her dream of being a true-crime writer - of exploring the darkest recesses of evil - and now she just may get her chance.

Four girls have disappeared at All Saints College in less than two years. All four were "lost souls" - troubled, vulnerable girls with no one to care about them, no one to come looking if they disappeared.
The police think they're runaways, but Kristi senses there's something that links them, something terrifying.
She decides to enroll, following their same steps. All Saints has changed a lot since Kristi was an undergraduate.
The stodgy Catholic college has lured edgy new professors to its campus and gained a reputation for envelope-pushing, with classes like the very popular "The Influence of Vampirism in Modern Culture and Literature" and elaborately staged morality plays that feel more like the titillating entertainment of some underground club than religious spectacles. And there are whispers of a dark cult on campus whose members wear vials of blood around their necks and meet in secret champers - rituals to which only elite have access.
To find the truth, Kristi will need to become part of the cult's inner circle, to learn their secrets, and play the part of lost soul without losing herself in the process.

It's a dangerous path and Kristi is skating on its knife-thin edge. The deeper she goes, the more Kristi begins to wonder if she is the hunter or the prey.
She's certain she's being watched and followed - studied even - as yet another girl disappears, and another. And when the bodies finally begin to surface in ways that bring fear to the campus and terror to the hearts of even hardened cops like Detective Bentz and his partner Reuben Montoya - Kristi realizes with chilling clarity that she has underestimated her foe. She is playing a game with a killer more cunning and bloodthirsty than anyone can imagine, one who has personally selected her for membership in a cult of death from which there will be no escape.

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Kristi Bentz survived encounters with a serial killer twice and now is ready to finally pick up her life to fulfill her dream and become a true crime writer. She enrolls in the All Saint College she used to go to before her life took dramatic changes. So much the better that there already seems to be a story only waiting to be written by her. Packed with the necessary information about the missing girls she begins her time at All Saints just to discover her high school sweetheart Jay McKnight is her new teacher in criminology.

Tough all the animosity Jay soon becomes involved in her investigations which were hugely influenced from some suspicions her former roommate voiced.

Kristi puts herself into the killer's focus without knowing he's already behind her wherever she goes, with her name on the top of his list.
Some people are intrigued by classes about Vampirism but for some people it goes much further: they not only believe in vampires, they think they are a vampire and they live it.

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Having read lots of Lisa Jackson's books I felt totally detached from this one and its bland characters which weren't too much but the hopping between them and the short chapters were quite tiresome, taking away the little suspense the story had to offer. The book drags, giving the reader the feeling of just putting the book away and read another one.

Rating:
Visit Lisa Jackson.

Hardcover: 432 pages
Publisher: Kensington; Doubleday Large Print (April 1, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0739494538
ISBN-13: 978-0758211835
ASIN: 075821183X