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Summary: Killing crime novellists!
Review: A killer is on the loose and his prey are writers of bestselling crime novels. They are unaware that they have written the script of their own murders. Indeed the killer stages the most chilling scenes in his victims' books. For one woman writer, the desperate hunt to uncover the killer's identity becomes a matter of life and death. Will Dr Cameron, an academic psychologist, be able to track the serial offender with the help of computer technology? Soon Dr Cameron will be caught in a race against time as her lover, Kit, also a thriller writer, disappears... The race culminates in a tense confrontation between hunter and a hunter. What will be the outcome? This thriller is really excellent. You should read it if you appreciate suspense combined with a literary touch, in this case the crime genre.
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Summary: A gripping thriller
Review: Dr. Fiona Cameron ( aka "Candid Cameron") is drawn into the middle of a nightmare that also threatens her lover Kit Matrin, although at first she refuses to believe that Kit might be in danger too. Working on several cases at the same time, more and more she gets drawn into the undertow of events. Candid Cameron has a few character traits that remind me of Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Patricia Cornwell Daniels' heroine. I assume that is one of the reasons why I liked the book so much.Let me assure you that you will not be able to put the book down until you have found out about the end of the story.It is worth every single cent!
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Summary: Really baaad book
Review: I found Vari Sylvester's performance a bit disappointing. Her voice on this audiobook is too monotonous, most of the character are read in the same tone so that listening to her can become tiresome at times.
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Summary: Another edgy thriller
Review: I just love Val McDermid's books! This one did not disappoint me in the least. McDermid has a remarkable ear for dialogue and a gifted capacity fo creating contemporary , believable and compassionate characters. Characters such as Fiona who at different stages in the novel are forced to deal with their inner conflicts and emotional demons. Mcdermid also paints a riveting portrait of the serial killer mentality, and juxstaposes this effectively with the science of geograpic profiling - which I must confess, I new nothing about until I read this novel. The issues of the novel are also its strength - friendship, honesty, companionship, and the coming to terms with the haunting "shadows" of the past. I also enjoyed the inclusion of the "gay" characters - a device which is not often employed in contemporary crime fiction. This novel renders beautifully the Scottish highlands, in fact, it's made me want to visit the area for my next holiday! A great read, and I await with baited breath for her next one. Michael Leonard
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Summary: As mysteries go it's top notch
Review: I love Val McDermid! Having said that I also want to mention that I can never read two of her books in a row. She leaves me seriously disturbed and gets under my skin the way no other writer can, and I need to read something cheerful and light once I've turned the last page of one of her novels.
The plot of this particular novel is gruesome and wholly engaging. We meet Dr. Fiona Cameron a geographic profiler (which by the way really works, we use it in my line of work) and her partner Kit who happens to be a crime writer. There are dual plots happening, and the story takes off and gains momentum right from the beginning. Crime writers are killed off using the methods their serial killers used in the books that they wrote. McDemid pulls off a basically simple plot with brilliance, and even though I felt a stab of disappointment when the killer is revealed, the overall excellence of this book is well worth it. My only question is: How can Val McDermid sleep at night??
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Summary: A little long in the tooth, but worth it.
Review: Killing The Shadows would have made a terrific serial killer thriller if only McDermid's editor had been a little more thorough. There was a lot of extraneous material that really wasn't needed, giving the book a length of some 500 pages. For example, the chapters set in Spain, while providing insight into the main character's skills, ultimately never led anywhere.
The other major gripe I had was the fact that the main characters spend an endless amount of time ruminating over whether or not a serial killer is offing thriller writers. We the reader already know this for a fact, so waiting for the characters to catch up doesn't exactly make for compelling reading.
Nevertheless, McDermid is a talented writer and the pace really begins to pick up in the last 150 pages or so. As silly as the killer's motive was, the climax was tense and exciting. All in all, the good points much outweight the bad, and Killing The Shadows has more than enough thrills to keep most crime fans happy.
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Summary: Really baaad book
Review: The characters in the book act and talk so stupidly, while supposing to be brilliant. The plot is convoluted. The motives are unbelievable. It's repetitious. It's a waste of time. After enjoying the first quarter of the book, I plowed through the second quarter, before giving up in disgust.It's not logical. For example, after two writers have been murdered, the good guys figure out a connection to a third having gone missing. They illogically conclude because of the connection, that #3 has been abducted. Where did abduction come from? The others were K I L L E D.
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Summary: What Has Happened to Val McDermid?
Review: This book was going along pretty well (although I wasn't particularly taken with any of the characters) but it sort of fell apart in the middle. I know why her character went to Spain (but I can't say because it would be a spoiler) but this section quickly grew very uninteresting and the book never recovered its momentum.
Also, this is another one of those books where there is not much suspense about whodunnit. This can be well done, but it wasn't well done here. The book is a journeymanlike work without the spark that keeps one reading late into the night.
The story of Fiona Cameron's emotional problems surrounding her sister's death is also unsatisfactory and rather wimpy and the climax of the main story is-- well, anti-climax. I don't know if she has just lost interest or what, but I wish she would go back to doing what she used to do so well, throat gripping suspense. I wonder if this series has been optioned to a television production company yet?
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Summary: Midday Shadows
Review: This mystery has merits, but the author would have done better to have set most of it at midday, when the shadows and the book would have been shorter.
As I read I had the sense that for its merit (modest) and its purpose (to turn my mind off at a busy time of life,) I was spending far too much time getting to the end. I skipped from about page two hundred to about page four hundred (!!!) with no ill effects. I must have missed something, but it all seemed fairly complete. Verbum sapientis.
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Summary: Val McDermid - please write more like this!
Review: This was a brilliant book that had me gripped right from beginning to end, the characters Kit, Fiona and Steve were really convincing - my only complaint being that the profiler Fiona was ALWAYS right. I'd like to read more books with this characters in - here's hoping.
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