Customer Reviews

Absolute Fear

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

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.

"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.

"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!

If you enjoy books that you can easily pick out who dun it, that are full of plot holes and where you are expected to suspend your belief to the point where you believe that the crafty "lawyer to the rich" lost his millions, his house and his snazzy car all within three months of being arrested, without ever going through an actual trial because the charges were dropped, this is the book for you. You'd think since the guy is a lawyer he'd know you don't sell off all your assets and liquidate investments for a bail hearing.

That's just the huge hole in the first few chapters. It gets worse. I like Lisa Jackson, but I'm going back to buying her in paperback. I feel like the idiot lawyer who spent his all his life's savings on three months worth of pretrial hearings. I paid way more for the book than the story was worth.

By the end of this book, it seemed that everyone in it was related to everyone else and about the only person who wasn't a blood relative to the killer(s) and/or victims was the reader, and the family tree was so convoluted I began to question my own lineage. And wasn't it convenient that all the people involved in the cover up or frame up or who were unwitting victims all had names that were palindromes? What about the tatoos? Honest, I knew what the tattoo meant the first time it was mentioned and the second time and the third time. I wanted to scream at the detectives in this one: Wake up, idiots! And these were detectives I liked in previous works by Lisa Jackson. This book was kind of interesting for the excitement end of it, but the mystery was no mystery (except when the ultimate bad guy turned out to be someone we hardly even meet in the book) and the romance between Cole and Eve was simply ridiculous. He was so abnoxious, I can't believe Eve was so shallow as to have any interest in him at all. On the other hand, why would this intelligent rising star of a lawyer be wasting his time with such a self-destructive airhead as Eve Renner? Maybe it was because he managed to lose his apparently substantial amount of accumulated wealth in about a month. He lost his house, his car...Everything and for what? Because he was a suspect? Cole definately needed a better financial planner. Okay, he had a great body and she was willing to do the deed with him whenever oppurtunity knocked. I wonder how their relationship will be in twenty years when he isn't the great hunk anymore and she's still hopping into bed with any stud who has a little animal magnetism. I don't know what to make of the explanation of the 'phantom' sperm. That was just way too convenient for the bad guy. Then there was Kristi, who found out late in the book how she was related. Kristi quit her day job on the off chance that she might be successful as a writer of true crime stories. Did she ever stop to think she might have to live for maybe a couple weeks before she started receiving royalty checks? How about an advance check if she had even started to write something? I don't know how that works, but can an unpublished, unknown and even unstarted writing writer earn a living? Anyway, I continue to count myself a Lisa Jackson fan, but this one was close to puting me over the edge and saying no more. I look forward to her next novel, but ABSOLUTE FEAR was not up to her usual standards. Bring on LOST SOULS! Maybe I'll re-read SHIVER or THE MORNING AFTER. Those are Lisa Jackson at her best.

I've read several of Lisa Jackson's books, and while I've liked the Bentz/Montoya stories, I thought this book was her worst by far.

It started very slow and didn't really pick up until close to the end. The storyline was confusing from the get go because so much had happened already before the book began, and the author didn't do a good job of recapping it. She also didn't do a good job of weaving in previous storylines, so someone reading this book without having read the others in the series would have no idea what was going on with Faith, Abby, Father James, etc.

The story went on too long and the way everyone ended up being related to each other was just beyond the realm of believable. It actually turned the book into a joke.

Too many ends were left hanging. What happened to Eve's brothers? Her father's will? Why the tattoos? What happened with Eve and Cole? They were the main characters through the book, but the whole wrap-up was about Kristi, setting up the author's next book with a cliffhanger, but not bothering to wrap things up for the main characters that we just spent nearly 500 pages reading about.

The book was also poorly edited, just like "Shiver." On one page, Montoya is talking to Bentz, Eve and Cole at Eve's house. On the next page, he's getting annoyed that Bentz hasn't yet shown up for their meeting with Eve and Cole, and Bentz is at the police station interviewing a possible witness. And this seems to continue in the next book of the series, as during the preview, it says on one page that Kristi and Olivia don't get along, then on the very next page it says they get along but aren't close.

Don't waste your money on this one.

I've read a few of the reviews and many have stated that there were some aspects of this book that were unrealistic... true. When I buy fictionally based books, I'm looking at the entertainment value, not whether or not the story is correct in procedures or religious practices.

As far as the entertainment value of this book is concerned, it was good and I enjoyed it, but was a little disappointed in the sudden ending. The build up was pretty suspenseful, and then BAM! The story ended without much of an detailed explanation of what happened to the main characters, with the exception of Kristi, who I had a hard time caring about throughout the telling of the Absolute Fear since she seemed like a sidekick throughout the book. The book was a little long, so I'm wondering if the meat of the ending wound up on the editing room floor in an effort to save a few pages of text.

All in all, I'm giving this book 3 stars. A good read, but not excellent/outstanding. I think it's predecessor, Shiver, was a much better book. Better character details, and a lot better ending!

Suspense, thrills, chills and romance what a fantastic read!!! I love a book that it easy to follow, but not easy to predict. This is so important with thrillers and mysteries.
Absolute Fear is one of Jackson's best!
Eve has unspeakable horrors happen to her. When she finally is able to go back to her life, those horrors just won't leave her alone.
Now ritualistic murders are happening and they are somehow linked to Eve. She has to turn to Cole, the man who was once her lover, and who may be a killer.

Lisa Jackson's newest release, Absolute Fear, is a riveting page-turner. Having recently read Most Likely to Die, co-authored by Lisa, Beverly Barton, and Wendi Corsi Staub, I found it so hard to put down that I knew I wanted to read more by each of these talented writers. This is the first full-length novel by Lisa that I've read--and it didn't disappoint.

All Eve Renner remembers of the night she almost died is Cole Dennis's face reflected in the window of the cabin. Pointing a gun. At her. Now, three months later, Eve is returning home to New Orleans, trying to put her life back together and forget that the man she once loved tried to kill her.

Cole Dennis has gone from a prominent and wealthy defense attorney, to a man with little left but the shirt on his back. His legal fees have taken everything he had. Now that the case has been dropped, Cole is desperate to rebuild his life. His first step--to find Eve and get to the bottom of what really happened. Because Cole holds a secret about that night that not even Eve remembers.

However, a new series of bizarre killings begin the day of Cole's release. Soon, even the police realize that Cole may not be behind these murders. But who is? And can they piece together the dark secrets of the crumbling asylum, Our Lady of Virtues, before it's too late for Eve?

Lisa Jackson is a master of suspense. She gives the reader just enough clues, and then throws a twist in at the end to bring a satisfying surprise. Along with a fast-paced plotline, Lisa creates great characters. If you have read her previous books, you'll be reacquainted with some familiar faces, such as Detectives Bentz and Montoya. While this is a stand-alone novel, the glimpses of back-story revealed should entice new readers to look up past titles.

If you're looking for an entertaining and heart-pounding read, Absolute Fear is for you!

Absolute Fear was very similar to Shiver. There is a lack of variety among the characters and the plot. Many of the characters seem to be carbon copies of each other.