Rack-O Books

Once again,Meg writes an edgy, suspenceful story. Full of action and unexpected twists and turns, one never gets bored reading this book. Of course, now we have to wait until the next book to see what will befall our main character. While I have read each and everyone of Meg's books, I have to add, please write another Jessie James book!!!
Thanks for another great read!
Terri Doria

So glad Meg O'Brien is back with another twister of a mystery/thriller. This one should be made for the "Big Screen!"
I loved it.

If action was the sole criteria, The Final Kill would be a classic. The problem with O'Brien's novel is that too many things happen that are simply unbelievable. Some of the plot twists are so bad they are actually funny. Also, O'Brien is sloppy when it comes to details. At one point, her main character suffers severe facial injuries that may require plastic surgery. Twenty-four hours later, after fleeing the hospital, she returns home where a friend fails to notice the injuries. A miracle? Perhaps. Despite its many flaws, the book is a fun read. Not only is the action non stop but readers will enjoy the antics of the main character, Abby Northrup, and her former teacher, Sister Helen.

This book, which is a sequel to Sacred Trust, was pretty good for mysteries, though I have read better.

Abby purchased the monestary and she is using it to house battered women and children from dangerous spouses. And surprisingly enough, her old friend Alicia shows up with her teenaged daughter Jancy in tow. She won't tell Abby why they are there, or what it is they are running away from. Then when the police and all the other FBI team show up at the door demanding to see them, Abby knows she is headed for big trouble. There was a murder committed at the hotel, and Alicia is one of the suspects. So as soon as Abby convinces the police they are not there, (lying well), then Alicia takes off leaving Jancy behind. She is nowhere to be found either-until many more troubles later, and Abby almost gets herself killed in the process.

In her travels to find Alicia and make her turn herself in, Abby gets hurt many times along the way. She runs into a lawyer Jimmy, who tries to help her out, and discovers along the way that there are 2 kidnappings in the process. One of them is the detective's son who is on this case.

Abby Northrup converted a monastery into a shelter for battered women and children. However, she never expected to see her close friend Alicia Gerard arrives with her daughter seeking shelter. When they do Abby notices both seem despondent and in shell shock.

Not long after taking the two females in the FBI arrives at the monastery demanding Abby turn over Alicia to them as she is a murderer, but the Feds are too late as Alicia quietly left. Sheriff Ben Schaeffer warns Abby to stay out of the investigation, but her concern for her pal forces her to sleuth for the missing woman. Ben proves right when Abby steps into danger that impacts national security with only her beloved sheriff trying to keep her safe.

Though it takes time to lay out the plot, be patient because THE FINAL KILL is a terrific thriller that is worth reading as Meg O'Brien writes a deep character driven amateur sleuth mystery. The romantic subplot enhances the prime whodunit and where is she investigation conducted by the heroine. Ben is a delightful champion trying to persuade the woman he loves to back off as the Feds and others demand she stay out of this or else. This superb tale will provide plenty of fun to fans of romantic suspense.

Harriet Klausner

Unfortunately for some reason I didn't realise this was an earlier O'Dell installment which I hadn't already read, but thought it was a later novel featuring a different character. Sadly I was soon disillusioned as the world's stupidest profiler made her appearance all too quickly and I made the discovery that Kava's later novels - flawed as they might be - were actually far better than this generic and badly written plotted installment.

The slushy romance between Maggie and Nick was bad enough (why do a sheriff and a FBI profiler have to look like models?), the lazy romance magazine assumption that Maggie is entitled to lust after other men because her husband doesn't understand her. Or that the fact that the killer and his target are all to easy to identify. But far far worse was the lazy writing and the enormous credibility gaps in the plot - I don't mind suspension of disbelief but this was ridiculous! As others have pointed out, for such a supposedly brilliant FBI agent Maggie seems totally clueless about evidence or how to handle an investigation and Nick isn't any better. Why does no-one pick up on the fact that Greg ACTUALLY SPOKE TO THE KILLER on his mobile and try to get him to identify the voice? Why does Maggie ignore important new evidence from a crucial witness, conveniently allowing him to be bumped off before he can speak? But what sunk me completely was the part where a mother comes home - in the dark - and doesn't worry in the slightest that her son - who was playing ouside unattended hasn't come home - despite the fact that a serial killer is targeting small boys who look very much like the said son - has a glass of wine and falls asleep quite unconcerned!
As if she - or any other responsible mother in the neighbourhood - would have let the kid out of her sight after not one but TWO local children had been kidnapped and murdered!

This is lazy writing at its worst - apparently Kava can't be bothered to come up with a clever way a psychpath might snare his intended victim but just relies on readers being dumb enough to swallow anything she throws at them. Definitely the worst Kava book I have read so far

I read this book in two weekend evenings, and I can't help but feel like my time would have been better spent somewhere else.

The premise starts out well. Just months after a serial child killer is put to death, a new body turns up in his old stomping grounds, mangled in exactly the same way for which the condemned was convicted. A small town reacts with panic and anger, and the sheriff is way out of his depth. That's when a sexy FBI profiler steps in, hoping to save the day -- only to become part of the game herself when the killer zeroes in on her one great weakness.

The problem is, I can't help but feel like I've read this story somewhere before. There's a distinctly assembly-line feel to this, like a markedly more grown-up Nancy Drew novel. How the characters talk, how they interact with their context, the sexual tension between the two leads: it all feels like well-trod ground. Even the subplot, dealing with the profiler's trauma at the hands of a playfully sadistic mass murderer, feels cribbed from the blueprints of a Thomas Harris novel. I kept expecting someone on the other end of the phone line to purr "Hello, Clarice."

One example should suffice to show my major problem with the book. Both the leading man, Nick Morelli, and the leading lady, Maggie O'Dell, are improbably good-looking and charismatic people, in the noir literature tradition, and the sexual tension between them is a major thread through the book. But every time it comes up, no matter whose point of view we're following at that moment, it's described with the same term: "electricity." Over and over and over again, this same single word is supposed to convey the complexity of human sexuality, driving it home like a piston on an engine.

Would it have been so difficult for the author to change that up a bit? Let me give her some suggestions, in case she decides to do a revised edition. Even if she wants to stick with the concept of lust as electricity, she has a range of words available to her to convey that idea. Spark, charge, voltage, current, shock, bolt, lightning. Also consider heat, friction, and magnetism. Would that have been so difficult?

This book was a real disappointment to me. And it pains me to say it, because I really enjoyed Kava's novel One False Move. This one is just so ordinary, so mechanical, that when I got to the end, it left me feeling like I had been chasing my own tail for two nights. This was a poor use of two good evenings I could have spent reading something more challenging -- or, as a thought, drafting my own thriller novel.

I can't say this book was bad, but I just can't bring myself to recommend it either. Keep shopping, dear reader, this isn't what you're looking for.

The writing was really good, and I would give it a 5 star rating, except the ending was really disappointing. It is quite obvious that it's a complete set up for another book.

Alex Kava writes a strong, church related mystery with Maggie O'Dell being the lynchpin that holds the whole story together.
The only element that stresses credulity is Kava's sexual innuendoes between Maggie and Nick( each brush is stunning, each
accidental touch electric and hinting of dirty, dirty thoughts.)
And she slips these in every chapter the two share.
Ignore these silly bumps in the night and you have an entertaining novel. I just ordered "A Necessary Evil"...
Let's hope the heat between Nick and Maggie has settled into a serious affection.

Do you want to read a book written for those without imagination? This surely has to be it. Cliched characters are ineptly drawn, and following a formula even Hollywood is tiring of: a tall, dark, handsome playboy sheriff, and a shapely, gorgeous FBI agent. Of course there's romance in the air!

Only the bad guys are ugly - or at least I presume so, as they don't get much of a description at all. But then, nor does anything else, resulting in a poor sense of place. Many authors go out of their way to give a sense of place, but not Kava. Contrast Kava's work with that of John Connolly whose prose is delightful and vivid; or that of Crais, whose work is a little sparser than Connolly's and the difference will be profound.

It was a labor, getting through this book, with repeated instances of point-of-view changes, often within a paragraph. In one place, it wasn't even possible to tell whom the author was referring-to as the paragraph contained references to several characters, all addressed as "she".

The book reads like a first draft, and the lack of careful (or it seems at times, any,) editing is obvious. Kava likes to use impactful verbs, but really, three instances of "grabbed" in the space of five lines demonstrates a vocabulary most high-school students would surpass and a quality of writing that just as many would turn up their noses at.

It would take little research to discover that "goals" are scored in soccer, not "points." But that too, seems beyond Kava's limited expertise.

Some readers spurn genre fiction as demonstrating too much telling and not enough showing. This novel can be held up as an example of all that those critics wish to bleat about.

I am so glad I didn't by this book, instead borrowing it from a library, as I wouldn't even want it on any of my shelves. I'd rather reserve that space for worthwile books by authors who craft - rather than draft - their prose. This book is now back in the library, and the money I would have spent on it remains firmly in my wallet.