The Killing Hour by Lisa Gardner
Nov. 12th, 2006 01:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
For three summers, the residents of Atlanta have been gripped by terror when the temperature creeps up to a hundred. For with the relentless heat comes a vicious killer. Each time he takes two girls. When the first body is discovered, it contains all the clues needed to find the second victim - but the clock is ticking ...
As an epic heatwave begins,rookie FBI agent Kimberly Quincy stumbles across a body. She has been face-to-face with a serial killer once before, and she knows only too well why this one has started the game again. He's raising the stakes. He wants the FBI's finest to come out to play ...
You know what to expect from a book like this - solid pacing, average characterisation and some gruesome murders. Lisa Gardner ticks all the boxes.
The main characters of Kimberly Quincy and Michael McCormack are pretty much by-the-numbers. She's never really gotten over the murder of her mother and sister and takes this case personally because the victim she's discovered has a resemblence to her sister. She's also a loner, not great at obeying orders and whilst normally v. pretty currently looks like hell because she's been pushing herself so hard to complete the FBI training course. Mac is an incredibly gorgeous, incredibly dedicated Georgian law enforcement agent, who pretty much falls in love with Kimberly at first sight (reciprocated of course, although Kimberly is slow to admit it) and who is determined to catch the serial killer, even if it means going outside proper procedure.
Like I said, the pacing is good - Gardner keeps the action moving and gives us additional POVs (such as a previous victim of the serial killer who survived, the current victim waiting to be rescued, the actual killer and Kimberly's estranged father, who's joined her in trying to hunt down the killer) and the murders are suitably horrific (the body that Kimberly finds has a rattlesnake in its body).
My main criticism would come from the fact that the killer is a little too obvious. I don't want to go so far as to give away the name, but anyone who reads a lot of murder thrillers will pick up on the identity pretty soon after they're introduced as a character. This is because there's no real point to having them on the page and they brought nothing to the storyline so to see them hanging around despite all this is a bit of an anvil clue.
There is in fact another problem with the killer that ties in to this. As said in the Blurb on the Back and as reinforced throughout the text, the killer takes 2 victims - the first is killed immediately and left where it can be obviously found but has clues left on them to the location of the second victim. From the perspective of the victim in this book (Tina), we know she was with a friend when she was captured and when we see the killer's perspective, it's written so as to indicate that he's taken 2 victims. It's therefore a bit of a surprise to discover that he's actually taken 4 women this time. It's completely unclear from the POVs in the book and it's dropped in as an aside by one of the FBI people. At the very least, I would have expected some reference to the taking of the other 2 women - as it is, it comes across as a cheap device and if the intention is to ramp up the horror and tension of what the killer is doing, it doesn't work because we don't know who they are and therefore don't care about them.
The Verdict:
Competently written but bog standard for the genre. Worth a look if you're into serial killers and thrillers but not if you're in the mood for something innovative.
For three summers, the residents of Atlanta have been gripped by terror when the temperature creeps up to a hundred. For with the relentless heat comes a vicious killer. Each time he takes two girls. When the first body is discovered, it contains all the clues needed to find the second victim - but the clock is ticking ...
As an epic heatwave begins,rookie FBI agent Kimberly Quincy stumbles across a body. She has been face-to-face with a serial killer once before, and she knows only too well why this one has started the game again. He's raising the stakes. He wants the FBI's finest to come out to play ...
You know what to expect from a book like this - solid pacing, average characterisation and some gruesome murders. Lisa Gardner ticks all the boxes.
The main characters of Kimberly Quincy and Michael McCormack are pretty much by-the-numbers. She's never really gotten over the murder of her mother and sister and takes this case personally because the victim she's discovered has a resemblence to her sister. She's also a loner, not great at obeying orders and whilst normally v. pretty currently looks like hell because she's been pushing herself so hard to complete the FBI training course. Mac is an incredibly gorgeous, incredibly dedicated Georgian law enforcement agent, who pretty much falls in love with Kimberly at first sight (reciprocated of course, although Kimberly is slow to admit it) and who is determined to catch the serial killer, even if it means going outside proper procedure.
Like I said, the pacing is good - Gardner keeps the action moving and gives us additional POVs (such as a previous victim of the serial killer who survived, the current victim waiting to be rescued, the actual killer and Kimberly's estranged father, who's joined her in trying to hunt down the killer) and the murders are suitably horrific (the body that Kimberly finds has a rattlesnake in its body).
My main criticism would come from the fact that the killer is a little too obvious. I don't want to go so far as to give away the name, but anyone who reads a lot of murder thrillers will pick up on the identity pretty soon after they're introduced as a character. This is because there's no real point to having them on the page and they brought nothing to the storyline so to see them hanging around despite all this is a bit of an anvil clue.
There is in fact another problem with the killer that ties in to this. As said in the Blurb on the Back and as reinforced throughout the text, the killer takes 2 victims - the first is killed immediately and left where it can be obviously found but has clues left on them to the location of the second victim. From the perspective of the victim in this book (Tina), we know she was with a friend when she was captured and when we see the killer's perspective, it's written so as to indicate that he's taken 2 victims. It's therefore a bit of a surprise to discover that he's actually taken 4 women this time. It's completely unclear from the POVs in the book and it's dropped in as an aside by one of the FBI people. At the very least, I would have expected some reference to the taking of the other 2 women - as it is, it comes across as a cheap device and if the intention is to ramp up the horror and tension of what the killer is doing, it doesn't work because we don't know who they are and therefore don't care about them.
The Verdict:
Competently written but bog standard for the genre. Worth a look if you're into serial killers and thrillers but not if you're in the mood for something innovative.
