Book Review: Fear No Evil

I believe that when I reviewed See No Evil my chief complaint was the plot and not Ms. Brennan's writing. Well, I've read the sequel, and I've changed my mind. Fear No Evil had a much better plot, but I still had some major problems with it.

The general plot is that Lucy Kincaid, the eigthteen year old sister to the other siblings in this trilogy, is kidnapped by a sadistic psychopath who airs 48 hours of live video on the Internet for $25,000 of him and his cronies repeatedly raping and eventually murdering their abductees, all under the guise of "consensual porn." He has done this before, but he is some kind of computer genius and the FBI can't seem to nail him. But five years ago an FBI agent named Kate Donovan came very close to taking him down. After her partner and boyfriend were murdered by this guy, known only as "Trask," she comes under fire from the Bureau and goes into hiding, making it her life mission to find Trask and bring him down. So she writes a software program or something that alerts her each time her puts a new video on the web. When she sees Lucy's video come up, she notifies the one person she trusts in the FBI, who notifies the Kincaid family. Dillion Kincaid, a forensic psychologist, eventually tracks Kate down and convinces her to help him find Trask before Lucy is killed.

Okay, so that's an okay plot and all that, but a love story in the middle of all this horror?! Lucy is raped repeatedly by her captors, all on video for her brothers to see, and yet Dillion is still thinking, "Wow, Kate's pretty hot, I'd like to bang her." All right, all right, to be fair to Brennan, there is not acknowledgment of these romantic feelings until after the ordeal is over, but still. Come on. There was just nothing at all to base the attraction on until, suddenly, they were in bed together. But I suppose it could have been there, but they both just kept it under wraps. Yeah, that's definitely a fair assessment, but I just didn't feel it. Dillion's a psychologist and he falls for a woman that has some major issues? That's a little too "let me fix you" for me, even though he doesn't seem to try to do that. I'm a shallow person, what can I say, but I'd run from someone with that much baggage. Run far.

Also, Brennan introduced a Kincaid we've never seen before, Jack, who supposedly left the family twenty years before. But she never resolves anything with Jack or why he left and stayed away, and as far as I know, this was the last Kincaid book. Also, isn't it pretty much a rule of trilogies that the characters in the previous books get some mention? Connor from See No Evil gets a semi-promiment role, but where the hell is Julia? The woman he supposedly loves and wants to marry? She's a no-show when the sister of the man she loves is kidnapped? Seriously, her name was not mentioned once and I started to wonder if I was reading these books out of order (I wasn't).

Lindsey's Grade: C+

Book Review: See No Evil

Eh. That's how I feel about this book. Eh.

The heroine is a deputy district attorney named Julia Chandler. The hero is a private investigator named Connor Kincade. The two go back about five years, when Julia threatened to prosecute Connor if he refused to testify against his partner and other police officers. As a result, Connor testified and was essentially forced to resign from the police department because of his "betrayal." So there is little love lost between the two of them.

But when Julia's sixteen year-old neice is the prime suspect in the disturbing murder of her stepfather, Julia hires Connor to get to the bottom of the case.

I generally like romantic suspense because at least the female protagonists do something. They're usually always portrayed as smart and assertive, mainly because they're activity involved in getting to the bottom of the mystery. Don't get me wrong, Julia was no different. But even though I liked both Julia and Connor, and their relationship was enjoyable if not a little rushed, the mystery in this book was totally lame. For one, it was completely unbelievable for me. It was just too far-fetched and bizarre. And second, Brennan showed her cards way too early! There was almost nothing left to reveal at the end except the names of the people behind the crimes, and considering that they were characters that didn't show up at all throughout the course of the book until the big reveal, I didn't really care.

I think I will probably give Brennan another try, though, because I do like her voice and her characterizations. It was just the plot of this particular book that I didn't like.

Lindsey's Grade: B-/C+