Rating:  Summary: Great thriller Review: They nicknamed him the Collector because Albert Stuckey captured his victims and slowly tortured and raped them over a period of months in ways too horrible to imagine. Eventually he broke their will to live before killing them. Top FBI profiler Maggie O'Dell spent two years profiling Stuckey before she could help bring him down and see him locked away. During a transfer to a maximum-security prison, Stuckey frees himself and kills two armed escorts before vanishing. When the FBI learns about the Collector's escape, they remove Maggie from the field and reassign her to a teaching position. However when acquaintances of Maggie are murdered with an M.O. identical to that of Stuckey, she is placed in charge of the case in the hopes that lightning strikes twice. If she fails she knows she will be better off dead. SPLIT SECOND centers on the obsessive behavior of the heroine and the villain especially towards one another because both are not just determined, they need to bring their opponent down. Thus readers have a front row seat to the ultimate cat and mouse game in which the person playing the feline seems to change with every twist of the plot. Alex Kava fills her psychological thriller with plenty of action as well, but it is her characters whose motivations are quite understandable and moves the audience. SPLIT SECOND is one book that would be a crime for sub-genre fans to miss.
Rating:  Summary: not very good Review: this book at lest i think is so munch like hanibal but it just falls flat. It was o.k but i would not ask anyone to read unless you had a lot of free time.
Rating:  Summary: Split Second by Alex Kava Review: This is one of the best books I ever read. You want to read it all the same day and not put in down for even a few minutes. This is only her second book and she is very young writer with a very good vocabular. This book has over 400 pages. You can never judge a book by it's cover. A serial killer can be a relative, friend or even a co-worker and you will never notice it.
The book is well written and the author goes in the mind of a serial killer and try to determine what can trigger somebody to kill. Some of the important stuff is only divulge at the end, therefore, you want to get to the end quickly to find out the final outcome.
Rating:  Summary: Perfect Follow up! Review: This one reads just as nicely as the first novel featuring these characters. Once again, our heroine is back, fighting internal demons as well as nasty seriel killers. The characters here are more developed than in 'Perfect Evil' and you can really feel the anguish that Maggie is going through. The reunion with Nick Morelli is nicely done and not sappy at all. The ending is truly creepy and lives up to the title of the book. I am highly recommending this one and can't wait for the next :) Thanks for reading! ~Pandora
Rating:  Summary: a great sequel Review: This was a much better book to the first, "A Perfect Evil". It reminded me a little bit of "Kiss the Girls" and thank goodness Maggie O'Dell hasn't fallen into the "I'm-so-perfect-you'll-end-up-hating-my-guts" Kay Scarpetta niche. You'll see just how fragile and strong O'Dell can be. It's a page turner - once you pick it up, you won't want to put it down.
Rating:  Summary: A Split Second Review Review: Throughout the novel, A Split Second, Alex Kava keeps the reader on their toes, leaving somethings unsaid but later explained. The complex characters with deep backgrounds make the reader fall in love with them and their intricate storylines. By writing from a first person perspective, Kava is able to allow the reader to personally relate to the instances and moments. Without a doubt, this is one novel to be remembered and re-read.
Rating:  Summary: O'Dell no Starling Review: To be fair to the author, Mira had given Sharon "Alex" Kava only six months to produce this followup to A PERFECT EVIL. This, unfortunately, is typical of the publishing industry and its "Strike while the iron is hot" mindset. It's as obvious in SPLIT SECOND as it was in APE that Kava takes many of her cues from Thomas Harris and his now-legendary Hannibal Lecter series. Harris obviously benefited enormously from being able to take over a decade in writing HANNIBAL, while Kava's editor gave her only one twentieth the time. In fact, Kava had once told me that the first seventeen chapters were written in the first month alone. Still, the so-called central theme of crossing the line separating good and evil in a "split second" isn't addressed at any appreciable length until the last 60 or so pages of the book. It's a theme that Kava could've explored in a more provocative way even given the brevity of her publishing window. This is a fast read, with smooth pacing, and the return of Nick Morelli, perhaps the most incompetent sheriff in the annals of fiction, is nonetheless a comforting presence. However, many of the male characters, of which there are plenty, are cookie cutter constructs and I find it hard to believe that O'Dell would even still have a badge and a gun given her shrill, strident and paranoid nature throughout the book. AD Cunningham comes across as a washed-out version of Harris's Jack Crawford and Albert Stuckey, too, is a similarly generic serial killer, something that a hack would've created after reading a Writer's Digest book entitled HOW TO CREATE A SERIAL KILLER. The conceit of a killer choosing victims in close proximity to the protagonist is a well-worn theme that has been better employed elsewhere. The denouement, also, is reminiscent of countless other serial killer thrillers in which the heroine has the final confrontation with the bad guy (WATCH ME, CATCH ME, LAST BREATH, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, etc.). However, Kava seems to have finally done some research in order to make Maggie O'Dell a more believable profiler. However, the author's Catholic sensibilities are reflected in O'Dell and what could have been a rousing love scene (virtually an obligatory ingredient in a Mira book) degenerates into a sloppy handjob because O'Dell is still technically married to her estranged husband Greg. As in the end of APE, Kava sets the stage for the next sequel by occasionally mentioning the Rev. Everett and alluding to Father Keller. I can't help but feel, however, that if Kava were allowed the time, she could create a real winner out of the first meeting between Maggie O'Dell and Albert Stucky that culminated in that Miami warehouse. With the proper treatment, she could make a viable sequel out of that backstory. I'll wait until O'Dell's next adventure comes out in paperback next August or buy a used hard cover on [local store]. If Mira cannot give Kava the time to write a better book, then I cannot spend over [price] buying those books.
Rating:  Summary: Hmm, Thomas Harris is this you? Review: Wow, Kava sure didn't put much imagination into this book. This book just turns my stomach with its unorigionality. The killer escapes, has a favorite female fbi agent, who just happens to be a greatly dedicated agent, that he teases with his killings. He even has a hole that he keeps his victims in until he kills them. Didn't even finish this book, the woman in the hole was the last straw. So dissapointing as I enjoyed A Perfect Evil.
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