This book is really bad. It is unbelievably, inconceivably, earth-shatteringly bad. This is a terrible, terrible book. It's poorly written, poorly researched, poorly executed, poorly edited and since I chose to try the audio-book format, it's important to say that it's poorly narrated (but more on that later).
I'm not going to trash a book this emphatically and fail to give you some reasons why--fortunately, I have plenty to choose from.
A lot of books in this genre, to some extent, follow a certain formula. This book felt like it was written while a copy of Mystery Writing for Dummies was open on the desk and the writer followed along every single step.
The writer spends the first half of the book reinforcing two points. The protagonist, Kate Wise, is not happy being retired and that she's pretty much the best FBI agent of all time. If you listen to the audio book, I recommend taking a shot every time one of these subjects is broached--but only if you don't have to be up early the next morning.
Her struggle with retirement has the depth of an inverted tea spoon. It consists of the writer essentially repeating it over and over again. And again. And again. And again. She only breaks the monotony of telling--not showing--the struggles her character has with retirement to talk about what an amazing agent she used to be.
The improbabilities of this story and book are ridiculous. Kate Wise beats up a 6'4 bodybuilder in the first few chapters but gets her ass handed to her by a much smaller person later--someone who isn't a fighter. The police work--or FBI work, if you prefer--is beyond shoddy. At one point, the great Kate Wise decides not to canvass the neighborhood of a serial killer's crime spree (even though all the killings are in the same area) because "[that rarely does any good.]"
Her former/current boss in the FBI brings her back to work the case then pulls her three days later. He assigns her a young agent for her to smooth out some edges, then decides Kate is too old and it may look bad in the press (she's 55 by the way) and instead of keeping the best FBI agent ever, with over 50 killers in custody because of her--assigns 2 noobies from the academy to replace her--because apparently that's much more suitable to the press in the middle of a killing spree?
When they catch the red herring bad guy, their case against him is silly--and the evidence is handled in such a slipshod way that the blood sticks to the bare hands of Kate Wise's partner. I mean--no reason to wear gloves right? You're only potentially contaminating evidence of a guy who's killed three women in brutal fashion.
It's not just that the characters in this book are shallow and annoying--and they are--but each is more improbable than the next. Each is dumber than the last. The dialogue is insufferable. And not a single character is written in a way that feels true. This is a problem with both the characters and the plot. It's clear that no research was done for this book. The cops don't talk like cops. The people don't talk like...well, people. There is absolutely no understanding of police procedure. There is no understanding of the criminal mind--the pop psychology thrown at the reader is laughable.
Everything about this book is bad, including and especially the end. The reveal/twist (that anyone with half a brain cell knew was coming) was boring--seriously, truly boring. The bad guy is dumb. The killer's reasons are dumb. The motives are dumb. How Kate Wise connects it all by talking to one guy she put away years ago and this situation mirroring that one exactly is dumb. It's just all dumb, dumb, dumb. This book is really terrible.
But I'd be remiss if I failed to mention how poorly this book is narrated. The audio version of this book takes a bad book and makes it so much worse--impossibly worse. It's actually the only reason I stuck with this book--it was my first audiobook. And I wanted to give the book a chance fearing that perhaps it was just the way it was being narrated that bothered me.
It turns out it was both. The narrator uses a ridiculous man-voice for all of the male characters. If a woman was going to mock/make fun of a man with a real deep stupid voice--that's the voice this narrator uses for every single male character. She seemed to emphasize things that didn't warrant it and failed to emphasize things that could have used it. It was awful. A book this bad needs a good narrator to at least try to make up for the poor writing. But this book didn't get that gift.
I can't believe I finished this book. In all honestly, it was morbid curiosity that got me through it. That and the fact that it was so bad, it became funny. I found myself laughing at parts of the book that were supposed to be serious just because they were so terribly written.
Not only did this author not do any research, I'm not sure she's ever even read another book in this genre. Somehow this book has spawned an entire series--5 books long with a sixth on the way and they seem to get decent reviews. Are readers really craving something this dumbed down? I don't understand it. The first book was published in August of 2018. I write this review in September of 2019. How you write 4 additional books in that span of time, I'm not sure. Though, the ability to ignore common sense, the unwillingness to learn the genre you're writing in and ignoring any sense to write real, meaningful characters who live in a real world probably helps.
Just flip Mystery Writing for Dummies back to page one and start all over again, I guess?
I want to close by reminding you this book is bad. If Blake Pierce felt okay with reminding me every other sentence that Kate Wise was amazing or that Kate Wise hated retirement, I feel justified in repeating that this book is bad. It's really bad. Don't read it. It is not good. Also, it's bad.