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Jessica Coran #10
Grave Instinct
The first killing is a morbid hint. The second confirms the fact: A serial killer is on the loose - with a method unlike any that Dr. Jessica Coran has ever come across. As she briefs fellow FBI agents on the killings, her mind can barely wrap itself around the case. Someone is drugging young women, cutting into their scalps with medical precision - and making off with their brains. What he is doing with them continues to baffle even the top FBI experts...
Until Jessica discovers the killer's mysterious calling card: a sign carved into the back of each victim's skull. Then, an anonymous phone tip implicates Daryl Thomas Cahil, a madman whose cannibalistic escapades included digging up the recently buried bodies of young girls to devour the part of the brain in which he thought their soul resided. Conveniently, he's just been released from a penitentiary for the criminally insane, where he'd undergone an unusual form of "rehabilitation."
Though most of the evidence points to Cahil, Jessica has her doubts. But even she can't anticipate the twist her investigation is about to take - one that gives millions of people a front row seat for the next victim's death.
Until Jessica discovers the killer's mysterious calling card: a sign carved into the back of each victim's skull. Then, an anonymous phone tip implicates Daryl Thomas Cahil, a madman whose cannibalistic escapades included digging up the recently buried bodies of young girls to devour the part of the brain in which he thought their soul resided. Conveniently, he's just been released from a penitentiary for the criminally insane, where he'd undergone an unusual form of "rehabilitation."
Though most of the evidence points to Cahil, Jessica has her doubts. But even she can't anticipate the twist her investigation is about to take - one that gives millions of people a front row seat for the next victim's death.
412 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 2, 2003
11 people are currently reading
164 people want to read
About the author
Robert W. Walker
184 books75 followersAka Geoffrey Caine, Glenn Hale, Evan Kingsbury, Stephen Robertson
Master of suspense and bone-chilling terror, Robert W. Walker, BS and MS in English Education, Northwestern University, has penned 44 novels and has taught language and writing for over 25 years. Showing no signs of slowing down, he is currently juggling not one but three new series ideas, and has completed a film script and a TV treatment. Having grown up in Chicago and having been born in the shadow of the Shiloh battlefield, near Corinth, Mississippi, Walker has two writing traditions to uphold--the Windy City one and the Southern one--all of which makes him uniquely suited to write City for Ransom and its sequels, Shadows in White City and City of the Absent. His Dead On will be published in July 2009. Walker is currently working on a new romantic-suspense-historical-mainstream novel, titled Children of Salem. In 2003 and 2004 Walker saw an unprecedented seven novels released on the "unsuspecting public," as he puts it. Final Edge, Grave Instinct, and Absolute Instinct were published in 2004. City of the Absent debuted in 2008 from Avon. Walker lives in Charleston, West Virginia.
Master of suspense and bone-chilling terror, Robert W. Walker, BS and MS in English Education, Northwestern University, has penned 44 novels and has taught language and writing for over 25 years. Showing no signs of slowing down, he is currently juggling not one but three new series ideas, and has completed a film script and a TV treatment. Having grown up in Chicago and having been born in the shadow of the Shiloh battlefield, near Corinth, Mississippi, Walker has two writing traditions to uphold--the Windy City one and the Southern one--all of which makes him uniquely suited to write City for Ransom and its sequels, Shadows in White City and City of the Absent. His Dead On will be published in July 2009. Walker is currently working on a new romantic-suspense-historical-mainstream novel, titled Children of Salem. In 2003 and 2004 Walker saw an unprecedented seven novels released on the "unsuspecting public," as he puts it. Final Edge, Grave Instinct, and Absolute Instinct were published in 2004. City of the Absent debuted in 2008 from Avon. Walker lives in Charleston, West Virginia.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 22, 2020
This was actually a very good book but the content was so graphic and horrific I can't bring myself to give it more stars. Some things just can't be unseen and some of the scenes in this book are scenes I kind of wish I didn't know about. Call it morbid curiosity I guess but I had to finish the book just because.....
In this book we meet one of the most appalling and depraved serial killers. He not only kills young women but he straps them down and while awake cuts open their skulls and removes their brains and then consumes the brains. Apparently inside the brain close to the brain stem is a small piece of tissue called the Isle of Rheil and it is this little piece of flesh that is the prize.
The FBI medical examiner Jessica Coran was a great character. The whole detective part of the book was good but it's just the chilling, planned and unimaginable torture these women endured was just too much. What also beggared disbelief was an almost cult following of people who were actually curious if eating someone's brain would give them extra power.
Yes this book was well written, yes this book was very suspenseful and page turning thrilling but for me there was just too much information.
In this book we meet one of the most appalling and depraved serial killers. He not only kills young women but he straps them down and while awake cuts open their skulls and removes their brains and then consumes the brains. Apparently inside the brain close to the brain stem is a small piece of tissue called the Isle of Rheil and it is this little piece of flesh that is the prize.
The FBI medical examiner Jessica Coran was a great character. The whole detective part of the book was good but it's just the chilling, planned and unimaginable torture these women endured was just too much. What also beggared disbelief was an almost cult following of people who were actually curious if eating someone's brain would give them extra power.
Yes this book was well written, yes this book was very suspenseful and page turning thrilling but for me there was just too much information.
August 13, 2015
THIS SEEMED LIKE IT WAS HEADING INTO SOMETHING EXCITING BUT IT NEVER QUITE MADE IT. I DID NOT LIKE ANY OF THE CHARACTERS (good or bad) THEY ALL WERE KINDA CREEPY AND THE FBI WAS RATHER STUPID ALL THROUGH THEIR INVESTIGATION. IT WAS SLOW, PREDICTABLE, AND REPETATIVE AND BORING IT NEVER PICKED UP. I KEPT WAITING FOR THE HORROR NEVER HAPPENED. ONE QUESTION CAN YOU CONSUME EMBALMED MEAT?? ;{
September 7, 2014
Buena idea, mal desarrollo. Muy lento y con escenas que no aportaban nada a la trama.
April 23, 2020
Like another reviewer wrote, this book has a very good story idea but it's poorly developed. It's too slow, too plain, too boring. It got exciting (at least for me) at page 302 -and the book's 390 pages. I gave it two stars just because of the explicit gore scenes.
July 15, 2021
a couldn't put downer...
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August 16, 2012Nice complex mystery....
Read
June 24, 2012SALYMAR'S REVIEW
Coming soon...
http://www.goodreads.com/starryfields
Coming soon...
http://www.goodreads.com/starryfields
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews