In Extremis

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation #9

by Ken Goddard

A ruthless and expertly trained contract killer is on assignment in Nevada's remote Desert National Wildlife Range...and he deliberately sets in motion a series of seemingly unconnected events that will soon test the skills of Gil Grissom and his team of CSIs -- Catherine Willows, Nick Stokes, Warrick Brown, Sara Sidle, and Greg Sanders -- to their limit. For all is not as it appears in this federal refuge, as law enforcement and lawbreakers alike are quickly caught up in a growing crime scene that leads to a deadly game of one-upmanship....

Genres: Mystery, Crime, Fiction, Thriller, Media Tie In, Tv

290 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 30, 2007

About the author

Ken Goddard describes himself as "a crime scene investigator, forensic scientist, wildlife crime lab director, husband, father, grandfather, supposed cattle rancher, and more to the point, a fiction author who writes fiction novels about professional terrorists, underground chemists, demented burglars and malicious poachers for any number of reasons."

Reviews

[Annemiek · Rating 4 out of 5]

CSI: Extreem is gebaseerd op de televisie series CSI, geschreven in 2007, nederlandse versie is in 2008 uitgegeven. Dit book is geschreven door Ken Goddard en het #3 boek dat ik van CSI gelezen heb.

Ik vond dit een spanned book en heb het dan ook in een paar dagen uitgelezen. Zat op het puntje van mijn stoel "a real page turner".

Een huurmoordenaar in een afgelegen natuurpark en verschillende moorden die op het eerste gezicht geen verband met elkaar lijken te hebben...


Zeker een aanrader voor de CSI fans en als je thrillers leuk vind dan is het zeker waard dit boek te lezen.

[Kat · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m really not sure what to make of this novel. The storyline was complex but it just ended up seeming far too confusing and making me struggle to get through it. One of the biggest problems I found with the novel was the timeline. Everything that happens in the novel supposedly happens over a very short space of time (I would guess around 24 hours) but at times this seemed almost impossible to grasp because so much was going on that when you realised that only maybe an hour or two had passed you couldn’t help but wonder how much had been done in that time. At times I found this to be quite jarring because I had believed myself to be days ahead of the previous action and yet when we returned to Mialkovsky it turned out to have only be a little bit of time.

I think one of the things I also found a little boring was the fact there was no real mystery. Yes the CSIs had to work out the killer and how everything ‘went down’ but the reader already knew. That said the initial crime scene was rather complicated to work out and I found myself getting muddled between the UCs and all the different cars which seemed to go around.

I don’t think Ken Goddard had the same understanding of the characters which Max Allan Collins showed in the previous CSI novels. The characters just didn’t seem to flow as well as they had done in the previous books. Some of the dialogue didn’t really seem to ring true to the characters.

The science in the book is also a little over the top. As much as I like CSI I don’t tend to view it as a lesson in forensic science and field investigations – this novel however seemed to want to give me that. There was far too much technical jargon which ultimately brought me out of the storyline and left me feeling rather confused and disorientated. I can understand the author (previously a CSI himself) wanting to give a realistic portrayal of the career but it just didn’t seem to work. The tests, processes and analysis are covered thoroughly and in detail (so much detail on the placing of stickers before being photographed left me feeling more than a little bored).

But for all the slogging through the novel there was not even a worthwhile conclusion. Yes I understand that in real life CSI cases there will not always be a satisfactory end to a case but this isn’t the real world. It is almost as if this was supposed to be a two parter – although I am not entirely sure I could face another book like this.

What could have been a very interesting story very sadly wasn’t.

[Joshua · Rating 2 out of 5]

The only reason I read this book was for the descriptions and obvious mistakes of the wildlife refuge that served as a crime scene. The story itself was actually quite slow, procedural, and read almost like a textbook. I think the CSI wizardry of the show doesn't translate well into the written word.

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice little tie-in novel. The author is a former CSI himself, so you know the science, at least, is accurate.

Found the final dramatic scenes a bit much, but hey, it's based on a television show after all.

Nice, light, entertaining read.

[Wanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a big CSI fan, so of course I loved it!

[Sandra van Dam · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is packed with technical jargon and the storyline is very slim.

[Valentini Georgopoulou · Rating 1 out of 5]

Στο Ορεινό Εθνικό Καταφύγιο Άγριων Ζώων στη Νεβάδα, ένας αμείλικτος και άριστα εκπαιδευμένος επαγγελματίας δολοφόνος έχει αναλάβει μια αποστολή. Θέλοντας να καλύψει τα ίχνη του, να θολώσει τα νερά και να μην κινήσει υποψίες, θέτει σκόπιμα σε εφαρμογή μια σειρά από φαινομενικά ασύνδετα μεταξύ τους γεγονότα. Στον τόπο των πολλαπλών εγκλημάτων καταφθάνει η εξαιρετική ομάδα εγκληματολόγων με αρχηγό τους τον Γκιλ Γκρίσομ, η οποία θα πρέπει να δοκιμάσει τις δυνατότητές της στο έπακρο. Καθώς προκύπτουν νέα στοιχεία κατά την έρευνα, αποδεικνύεται πως τίποτα και κανείς δεν είναι όπως αρχικά φαίνεται. Ένα θανάσιμο παιχνίδι επικράτησης του καλύτερου…

Διαβάζοντας το οπισθόφυλλο με την περιγραφή της υπόθεσης κατενθουσιάστηκα. Λέω θα έχει δράση και σασπένς, έχοντας στο μυαλό μου την καθηλωτική ομότιτλη σειρά. Δυστυχώς όμως, το βιβλίο αυτό με κούρασε αφάνταστα, «αγωνίστηκα» για να το τελειώσω και πολλές φορές μπήκα στον πειρασμό να το παρατήσω (πράγμα το οποίο δεν έχω κάνει ποτέ ως τώρα). Η υπόθεση ήταν πολύπλοκη και μπερδεμένη. Υπήρχαν εκτενείς, λεπτομερείς και άσκοπες επιστημονικές περιγραφές καθώς και των διαδικασιών συλλογής στοιχείων. Βαρετό, άνευρο, αργό, δίχως αγωνία. Δυστυχώς, με απογοήτευσε.

[Valerio Pastore · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sorry to say, but given the premises and the first part of this CSI episode, I had built up great expectations! I was sure that everything was going to be solved with all the action on the field while the brains at the labs helped how they could...
But, no.
This episode is a convoluted mess where you can't tell what's really happening. Attention shifts from a killer's motive to another, his presence on the scenery is forced, his 'final confrontation' with the law and the militaries is just a shortie without any in-depth. The drug-busting operation was, in the end of no importance. The feds misshaps were of no importance, the mafia was of no importance...
At a certain point, Grissom was supposed to get to safety due to being...well, literally under fire but he says 'no' and happily put the life of his protectors at risk... NOTHING makes sense here!
All the techies were really intriguing, in line with the series' very nature..but when the final result is a "I don't even know what all this work served!", well...that was the final nail in the coffin!

[B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the fact that this book was more technical than the first six. However, because the books are all roughly the same length, this meant that the story was sacrificed somewhat in order to provide room for that additional technical detail. I would have preferred it if the publisher was more focused on content than page count, but at the same time, with books such as these, I understand the desire to keep to a structure in order to maintain a consistent reader base. Still, it would have been better had the story been developed in equal measure to the dissemination of forensics.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this TV show. I had no clue there were books about the show. I really enjoyed this one, and can't wait to read more books in the series.

[Darinda · Rating 3 out of 5]

The 9th book in the CSI series. Fast-paced and entertaining.

[Brigitte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Het is een goed verhaal, ondanks dat dit verhaal maar 1 grote zaak bevat.
Het is leuk om ook de gedachten van de moordenaar te lezen, wat hij vindt van hoe de zaak onderzocht wordt.

[Karissa Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

SO good! Definitely wasn't expecting the ending!!

[Daniel Germain · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the overall crime that the author set up for the Las Vegas crime lab super team to come work out, however, this was just about the only thing that I really enjoyed from the book. Part of this I feel comes from the fact that this just didn't feel like the CSI that I know and love. When I read all the CSI books by Max Allen Collins the characters really felt like the exact characters were pulled straight from my TV set and thrown into my books. In this novel the only similarities that I really feel are the names of the characters and some forced homages to the show like Grissom's willingness to do things using an older method when new ones have been created. Not only did the connection to the TV CSI team feel lost, throughout the whole book I found myself rooting for the bad guy introduced instead of the team. There were several questions throughout the book that weren't answered, which I don't always mind but in a detective novel most should at least be wrapped up, and if a sequel were made which answered the questions I'm not even sure I'd be willing to read it. One final thing I think should be noted is that many of the procedures that are described in gathering or interpreting the evidence may not be clear to all readers. I am a die hard fan of the show and feel like I know quite a bit about the procedures that are used but I still had to slow down to figure out what the heck the author was talking about and what the importance was of the actions the characters were doing.

[Mauri · Rating 4 out of 5]

While it definitely spent a little more time developing the character of the bad guy than I would have liked, I enjoyed the overall plot of this one more than Snake Eyes (CSI). The author also had a better grasp on the utilisation of a large cast, though using the right tool for the job in each case meant a cut in dialogue for some of the main characters, while the logical choices (usually lab techs) got some actual useful "screen"time.

The shooting reconstruction plot was interesting, though the author seemed to have trouble dragging the focus back towards the original reason they were all out in the desert - to re-construct a shooting scene involving federal officers. I quickly lost track of all of the officers involved in the shooting, though they turned out to be pretty inconsequential.

Cons - Strong focus on Grissom in this one, less so on the other CSIs, to the point that they were outshone by Bobby Dawson, Wendy, and Hodges. Even Archie had a cool (tiny) subplot. I think I'm just going to have to face the fact that there are only around ten of these books and the likelihood that one of them is going to focus on my favorite characters is low.

[Stephen Levesque · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this as a TV Show, and reading to books are a good experience. They are a Good read.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very enjoyable and edge of your seat addition to the CSI book collection. Again the characters are all written well and are consistant with their on screen counterparts. This story focuses a bit less on the forensics and a bit more on action but it does not suffer for it. Goddard manages to create a tension action thriller in the middle of a forensic investigation and even manages to include some dramatic large scale forensic techniques using luminol and helicopters, which I must admit was very well conceived. The cat and mouse games between the CSI's and the killer is brilliant, tense and nail biting, more so than the usual games as the killer is there hidden in the mountains while they are investigating the scene. This is a real and thoroughly enjoyable page turner.

[Jim McGowan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first of the CSI novels I've read in a long time (I've read all the preceding ones) and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The story was a face paced, all-in-one-night type that was really captivating. It had more tension and action than I remember from the other novels, but still kept well in keeping with the established characters and canon.

I really looked forward to picking up this book every day I was reading it (and there weren't many days, as I tore through it quickly!). It was a great read and I hope this writer produces more novels in this series. Recommended for all CSI fans.

[Annemieke / A Dance with Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall this book was an okay read. But it seemed to lack a spark of surprise in me as I was reading it. I think part of this had to do with the first chapter which focused on the contract killer. I felt the chapter was too long, we learned too much about him already and it left no surprise to the case later in the book. Also there was a lot of technical talking in this, sometimes too much on one page to keep it interesting for the ones that do not have a scientific background or interest.

[Jen Ifer's Inklings · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was okay. It was certainly not one of my favorite CSI based books. I think that this book had a lot more "technical" stuff in the ballistics area that completely lost me on. And Grissom didnt "act" like he does in the show.

Otherwise it was an enjoyable book.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't keep these books long and rarely read them more than once. The books in the series are a nice adjunct to the TV series. They are a nice break from books that require some thought as you are reading. Entertaining.

[Jennifer Wardrip · Rating 2 out of 5]

So far, this is my least favorite of all of the CSI titles. It's not the writing so much as the characters involved that made we quit about three chapters in. I just couldn't get excited about this story line, but others may feel differently!

[Billy Maguire · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a little surprised by this book, I was expecting this to be a simple cash in of the show. But have been pleasantly surprised by how much i enjoyed it. I thought it was well written and moved along at at decent pace. Not the most memorable book ever but a decent read none the less.

[Dawn Michelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

OMGOSH I thought this book would never end. I LOVE the CSI series and the first 8 were really pretty good. NOT this one. Ugh. Technical to the point of my eyes glazing over and really brutally boring writing made this take DAYS longer than it should have to finish. Ugh.

[Wendell · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'd rather watch the T.V show.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

First 3/4 was pretty slow, a lot of scientific jargon. The end was much better.

[Janice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it!!!!!

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

LOVE the show... and the book was much better then I anticipated... I LOVE GREG SAUNDERS!

[Margaret Konecsni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best I've read. I'm surprised Collins gave up on the series, he's that good.

[Monica Willyard Moen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Awesome ending and interesting characters.