A decent plot spoiled by too many coincidences & a fizzle ending | The 7th Victim

book: The 7th Victim | Alan Jacobson

books:


	• The 7th Victim Alan Jacobson Vanguard Press, 2009 - 448 pages average customer review:based on 20 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Too Many Back Stories

It seemed like it took forever to get through this book!
The main story is about the "Dead Eyes" killer, a serial killer who mutilates his/her victims and paints on the wall in their blood. The hero/main character is Karen Vail, a FBI profiler.
Karen is in a custody battle with her ex-husband - this creates situations that don't seem believable. The physical fights between Karen and Deacon, her ex are tiresome. When her son is injured, it's unrealistic how she fits hospital visits into her schedule. Also she is falling in love with a fellow officer, finding out about her past, putting her mother in a nursing home and seeing a lawyer regarding the custody of her son - all this during the investigation of the serial killer. Too much blah, blah when there should be lots of action. When I finally got to the action part, it just didn't draw me in or make me turn the pages.
I won't be reading The 7th Victim again.

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A decent plot spoiled by too many coincidences & a fizzle ending

I've never read Jacobson's stuff before & as such, I have nothing to hold this book up against. (Other reviews here say his older stuff is better.) That may have worked in his benefit to some degree while I was reading this book.

The book follows Karen Vail, a profiler for the FBI. When Karen isn't attempting to profile murderers & criminals, she's trying to fight for a divorce from her abusive husband & gain custody of her young son Jonathan. Her barely balanced life gets thrown into even more chaos when one of her most mysterious cases, the `Dead Eyes Killer' begins to become more prolific. When evidence shows up that implicates her & people start pointing fingers in her direction, Karen has to try to find the killer... or get fingered as the murder.

I did like this book & I liked the characters for the most part. It's just that like others said, there were just too many coincidences in this story. I can't go into detail without spoiling the plot, but it just didn't flow very well together. It seemed forced & not very organic. All the coincidences stem from one thing, which is unfortunate considering how important it is to the story. I couldn't help but think that if it had been worked into the story earlier, the element would have been much more cleanly executed.

This next paragraph has a spoiler within it. Not THE spoiler, but a plot element. It shouldn't affect the reading of the book at all. (But if you want to hear my big problems with the story, read the comment I'll post after this review gets up on amazon.)

I also got frustrated with Vail & her supervisors. Several times during the story, Vail does incredibly stupid things. I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt considering that she's going through a lot during the course of the story. Maybe she just wasn't thinking straight. (SPOILER) But when she's taken off of the case later on in the book, her bosses let her back on with very little complaint. Even the guy who hates her guts doesn't stop & say "hey, you had this happen & that's connected to such & such, so having you on is a bad idea". It just didn't seem very realistic that she'd be back in the case like that.

And the ending? It isn't terrible, but it just seemed to lack the punch that I was hoping it would have. I couldn't help but feel like it was slightly anti-climatic, all things considered.

I did enjoy the book as a brainless read, though. It was entertaining enough that I think a lot of people might like it as a beach or an airport read, but not much more than that. Fans of Patricia Cornwell might like this, but I'll warn you- it doesn't reach the same level of realism that her books have.

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The Dead Eyes Killer lurks in the backyard of the famed FBI Profiling Unit. His brutal murders, unlike any others previously seen, confound the local task force, despite the gifted profiling skills of Special Agent Karen Vail. But along with Vail?s insight and expertise comes considerable personal and professional baggage.

On leave pending a review of her assault on her abusive ex-husband, Vail must battle forces determined to bring her down, as she fights to find Dead Eyes before he murders more young women. But the seventh victim is the key to all that stirs this killer...the key that will unlock secrets perhaps too painful for Vail to bear. These are secrets that threaten to destroy her, secrets that will bring down her storied and promising career. For Karen Vail, the truth rests at the heart of a lie. And uncovering it could get her killed...

With material meticulously researched during seven years of study with the Bureau?s vaunted profiling unit, Alan Jacobson brings refreshing realism and unprecedented accuracy to his pages, as he takes readers behind the scenes of the FBI Academy, where he worked with the actual profilers who have studied and interviewed twenty years? worth of serial killers.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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