Absolute Fear [Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Lisa Jackson (Author), Jennifer Woodward (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2009

For the past three months, Eve Renner has struggled to remember the night she was nearly killed and her lover was tried for murder. She remembers getting the anxious call from a friend from her past: “Meet me at the cabin. I’ve got evidence.” She remembers seeing that friend lying in a pool of blood. And she remembers a horrifying glimpse of her lover Cole Dennis’s face as a gunshot plunged her into darkness. Now, her memory and emotions scarred, Eve has returned to New Orleans to forget the past. But the past will not be forgotten. Eve’s shattered memory has helped Cole walk on murder charges just as a new series of killings begins. The latest murders are bizarre and baffling. The victims are killed in a ritual fashion, a series of numbers tattooed into their bodies. 212. 101. 111. 323. There is no clue to their meaning, no connection to the victims except one: Our Lady of Virtues Hospital, the crumbling old asylum that was once the scene of unspeakable madness. For Eve, it was a second home as a child. Her father was a doctor there, and she spent hours exploring its secret chambers, hidden rooms, and forbidden passageways. Somewhere in its decaying rooms lies the key to a terrible crime, a betrayal beyond imagining whose echoes are now being felt with a vengeance – a crime that seems to lead to Eve herself. And the only man she can trust with the search is Cole, her former lover and, just possibly, a cold-blooded killer. As forgotten memories begin to surface, bodies are found and each twist leads to another terrifying piece of the puzzle. Someone is watching, planning, luring her back to the ruins of Our Lady and the shocking truths hidden there – someone who has been waiting for this moment to strike. He is deadlier than she knows. For the sins of the past must be revealed, the crimes brought to justice, and the price paid – in blood.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In bestseller Jackson's spine-tingling romantic thriller, the turbo-charged follow-up to Shiver (2006), photographer Abby Chastain, who played a major role in Shiver, finds she may have a half-sister in Eve Renner, the adopted daughter of Dr. Terrence Renner, former head psychiatrist at Our Lady of Virtues Mental Hospital, a shuttered asylum near (pre-Katrina) New Orleans. When "the Reviver," a tattoo-loving psychopath intent on revenge, almost kills Eve, the amnesia-plagued Eve fears Cole Dennis, her lawyer boyfriend, might be the monster, since she saw him at the scene of her assault (and a friend's murder), though Cole is released for lack of evidence. The body count mounts through many unexpected twists and turns as a grim Det. Reuben Montoya, Abby's fiancé, and his partner, Rick Bentz, try to puzzle out the killer's cryptic clues before he strikes again. A heart-stopping resolution suggests another heavy-breathing update might be in the works. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Eve Renner has been recovering from gunshot wounds after having being lured to the crime scene where a good friend was killed. She's lost part of her memory of that night, so she can't be sure that her boyfriend was the one who shot her. On the very day she moves back into her house, he is released from jail. Eve hopes not to see Cole at all, but he is lured to Eve's father's house and arrives at another crime scene. Everything is the same as the first: throats are slit, messages are written in blood, and the victims have been tattooed. Madness and evil are at play as Eve's past and present coalesce, and the asylum where her father worked and Eve played as a child emerges as a key to the mystery. Wonderfully written, tense, and suspenseful with shocking revelations at every turn, Jackson's disturbing tale will leave readers on the edges of their seats. Maria Hatton
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: ISIS Audio Books (May 1, 2009)
• ISBN-10: 0753141213
• ISBN-13: 978-0753141212
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)

More About the Author

#1 NYT and USA TODAY bestselling author Lisa Jackson started writing after her sister read an article in TIME Magazine in 1981 about how young mothers were making money writing romance novels. Both Lisa and her sister, Nancy Bush, began their writing careers right then, and lo, these many years later Lisa has published seventy-five plus novels and has no plans to slow down anytime soon.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Requires suspension of belief..., November 26, 2007

By 

Tracy Vest (Northern California) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Absolute Fear (Hardcover)

Eve Renner sustained a gunshot wound upon discovering her childhood friend slain in a remote cabin, and the last face she saw before passing out was that of her jealous lover, attorney Cole Dennis. With evidence lacking, and Eve being an unreliable witness due to partial amnesia, he's set free after three months and told not to bother Eve, but he can't keep away from her. Despite a restraining order, he seeks Eve out after he is summoned to the house of her father only to find him murdered in the same manner. When more bodies pile up, all bearing different numbers tattooed on their foreheads, the police realize that they might have been hasty in trying to pin the first murder on Cole. All the victims have a history with now-defunct Our Lady of Virtues mental hospital, and there appears to be a link between Eve and the suicidal Faith Chastain, whose death figured prominently in Jackson's "Shiver".

You have to suspend belief that a high powered attorney can lose everything including the clothes on his back when he hasn't even been indicted, or that his lover can be so quick to forgive him, or that the same town can have a pious serial killer in their midst not once but twice in a single year (make that three times since the door has been left open for another sequel). My chief complaint was that the story is too close in plot to "Shiver," and that detracts from the story, as it gives it an all too familiar "been there, done that" theme, in fact, I thought a couple times there that I'd already read the story, particularly the setting and the police officers in charge. However, Jackson is a master at weaving an intricate plot (and knows her Catholicism), and I found myself digging in late into the night to discover the identity of the mastermind behind the killings.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Absolute predictability, February 28, 2008

By 

Linda Pagliuco "katknit" (CT, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Absolute Fear (Mass Market Paperback)

"I'm livin' a soap opera," drawls Eve under her breath, as she descends the stairs to greet her lover, who is slaving over a hot skillet of bacon for their reunion breakfast. And Absolute Fear is a soap opera of a book, lengthy, repetitive, and so predictable. Incredibly sexy Eve, barely recovered from a terrifying murder attempt, hasn't the sense to 1) stay away from danger and let the police do their work, 2) stay away from the impossibly hunky Cole, whom she thinks may have tried to kill her, 3) stay away from the creepy abandoned psycho hospital where she grew up. The cops on the case, barely a year after another serial killer situation at the same institution, can't seem to hook up the clues that are screamingly obvious. Why they didn't raze that place after the first round is the biggest mystery in this clunker.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Just didn't work for me, August 2, 2007

By 

mahikahn (Columbus, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Absolute Fear (Hardcover)

"Cold-Blooded" and "Shiver", the previous two books in this series, were very good. This one, not so much.

Not enough info on:
*Eve's relationship with Cole before the shooting.
*What happened to Eve and Cole in the three months after the shooting.
*What really happened with Cole on the night of the shooting, because the few lines it was covered in were unclear.

Not enough development of the male and female leads. Ex: Did Eve work? If not how did she get her money?

As someone else pointed out why did Cole lose his house, car, job, money and possessions when he hadn't even been indicted yet? His attorney was a friend so he would have gotten a break on that fee and Cole was an attorney also so he would have been able to do a lot of the work on his own.

Now we have two women in the TSTL (too stupid to live), dumber than a box of rocks, don't have two brain cells to rub together category. Eve had found her friend brutally murdered with a tattoo carved into him, she'd been shot and almost died. Then her father was murdered in the same manner as her friend (also with a tattoo) and Eve has been targeted by the killer. Yet she went running around on her own, meeting a friend at a restaurant and then into a deserted insane asylum. TSTL

Kristi's dad is a cop and she's mad at him because he won't give her privileged details on a current investigation so she can write a true crime book. Kristi had been kidnapped, chained to a wall, and almost died because of the serial killer that had been after her. Yet there she is, a year or so later, wandering alone around the same insane asylum as Eve, not at the same time, taking pictures of the area where a nun had just been found also carved up and dead. TSTL

Other reviewers have brought up the fact that the insane asylum plot is getting really old and I agree; its way past time for it to go away.

Then there's the now dead priest who was taking advantage of women and fathering kids all over the place. This is just plain insulting! There have been cases of abuse by priests lately, but the vast majority of priests are good, spiritual people who believe in their calling. This part of the plot was particularly distasteful!

I realize New Orleans is not a huge city but it's not Mayberry so having all these people related to each other goes way past the bounds of being even slightly credible.

Fortunately I bought this book used!