Customer Reviews

Burnout

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

BURNOUT is a compelling and terrifying journey. Jack Stein is the distilled essence of an accomplished FBI profiler. By dispassionately weighing facts and meticulously analyzing behavior, Stein finds rational patters in seemingly irrational violence. He forges the killer's behavior into a weapon, ingeniously turning this powerful pathology onto itself. MS. kadow offers the reader uncanny insights into both the mind of a killer and that of an FBI profiler as each become predator and prey. BURNOUT is a harrowing and ultimately gratifying read. Highly recommended.

I found Burnout by accident during a vacation in Hawaii. I then found myself trying to find extra time to read instead of enjoying the island and my vacation. The suspense created by the sinister actions of a madman, working against a "survivor" of a life of obstacles and disappointments was engaging. It was unbelievable how unfair Lacie's life had been, until you learn little by little the origination of her pain. The streams of consciousness and transgressions into the characters' past all come to a rousing finally. What a fun read.

Although the book was readable and kind of interesting, I find myself in the VAST minority here when I rate it 3 stars. My first problem with BURNOUT was Jack, the heroic FBI agent. Despite being good at his job, I really question if mavericks like this are welcome in the FBI. If he is really welcome in the brotherhood of the feds it would only be because he is a virtual superman, so unbelievable that I really tired of him. The same goes for the killer in this novel. Not only was he evil and a genious, but he was able to predict almost to the minute of where our heroes would be and when they would be there. I think the implausability of the happenings were just too much for me, especially the contrived fires, the opening scene on the aircraft carrier and the mountain climbing in the final chapter. It was supposed to be 20 below zero with 50 mile an hour winds during a blinding snowstorm. No way, no matter how much you love your daughter. Not a climber with exactly no mountain climbing experience. Add in the situations that set everything in motion: Secret government experiments, coincidence of the girls being at the same camp, tires blowing out and the auto accidents going exactly as planned and that idiot Jerry. Jerry was a good father? Instead of having the police questioning him, they should have thrown his sorry behind in jail for child endangerment. Oh, that's right, they didn't bother to check his story which would have taken all of five minutes on the phone. Brother!!! As for Lacie, the heroine, I could not really develop a positive feeling for her. She seemed cold and to be honest, pretty incompetent. I was hoping for a heroine who is at least semi-capable of taking care of herself. So anyway, when I purchased Burnout, I also purchased DEAD TIDE by Jeannine Kadow which is another novel featuring Lacie Wagner. I plan to start it right away. Who knows? It may be better. If it's only just as good as BURNOUT it won't be a waste of time.

This is the first book I've ever read by Janine Kadow, and I'm looking forward to reading more. It was truly a "thriller." I didn't want to put it down, yet I didn't want to keep reading it because I didn't want it to end. I recommend this book to those like me, who like to be on the edge, waiting for the next scare! This is what I call a real thriller!

I found this book for sale in a gift shop and, by the description on the cover, just had to buy it. I never heard of the author but she's really mader her mark with me! I'm anxious to buy her other book. Jeannine is an excellent writer and her tale keeps you on the edge of your seat. If you DON'T buy this book, you'll be very, very disappointed! Great work, J.K.

I found this novel in the paperback section of the grocery store, and picked it up for some light, entertaining reading. What a surprise! This novel is written very tightly, with terrific characterizations, quick plot movement, and horrifyingly graphic description. I'm a fan of Cornwell and Sandford, but feel this surpasses anything I've read by either of them. I intend to order the author's first book to read. More, please!

This is a thoroughly enjoyable book, full of suspense and pathos. It was a true page-turner, from the first page to the last, but upon finishing it, I was so sorry that it was over. The characters were as believable as any other, and evoked both sympathy and revulsion. I even felt sorry for the "hunter", because there was a reason for his behavior (up to a point). My only criticism, and it is very tiny, was the predictability of the discovery of the condition of Lacey's daughter toward the end of the book. But this is a book that I will definitely read more than once - I have already recommended it to several people. I will keep an eye posted for new novels by this author.

I found this book difficult to put down. It was a mystery from beginning to end and kept me in suspense.
This isn't the type of book I normally read and can't remember why I purchased it to begin with but once I picked it up and started reading I was hooked in the story.

Jeannine Kadow's second novel draws on her own experiences in television journalism as she narrates the harrowing adventures of Lacie Wagner, successful solo anchor of the six o'clock news on Washington, D.C.'s NBC affiliate. Lacie's glove-encased, burn-twisted stump-hands are our first clue that her rise to media success has been a triumph over personal disaster. Those burned hands, the nightmare-haunted mind, and the horrifying secrets they reveal indicate the accuracy with which Kadow has entitled her book - BURNOUT - as in the ashen carcass of a loved one rather than a stressed mental condition.

The story is told in the first person from the viewpoint of an insecure and sometimes deeply disturbed Lacie Wagner. Interspersed late in the novel are short, italicized chapters in which the murderer, who remains a murky mystery deep into the novel, reveals his sexually demented agenda. The first-person perspective offers a revealing look into the complex psyche of the physically and emotionally scarred burn-victim, but weakens when it attempts to describe the thoughts and vulnerabilities of other characters, particularly those of Stein. The third-person narrator who intrudes to offer the italicized bits about the murderer disrupts the flow of the story. It's as if Kadow intended to write the novel as Lacie Wagner's post-trauma confessional in which she puts together all the pieces that came to her at various times throughout the experience, then decided against the idea without restructuring the narrative voice.

BURNOUT is a compelling read, and the portraits Kadow offers of burn victims and the horrors of burning alive are rich, disturbing, and strikingly realistic. This novel is not for the faint of heart, and I would certainly not recommend it to those who have been victims of intentional, violence-filled burns themselves. Kadow's characterization of the independent Lacie Wagner contains few flaws, and Kadow intertwines Stein's secret past into the murderer's plot and into Wagner's experiences perfectly. Although the love interest between Wagner and Stein follows a weary track, the sexual tension between Lacie and the murderer remains palpable to the very end. And Kadow's portrait of the burning murderer is chilling and detailed. The circumstances that create such a monster are contrived in the novel, but the roots of the research that created the monster remain a contemporary moral dilemma as relevant as genetic mastery itself.

BURNOUT is a novel that explores the far-reaching and potentially fatal consequences of medical research that goes beyond the pale. Kadow writes to entertain, but the discerning reader finds much to fear between the lines. Human nature is as gentle or as evil as its genes and its environment, and is as capable of giving flowers as of striking a match and scarring the world. Our history betrays this wretched truth, and BURNOUT reminds us while successfully entertaining us.

I really liked the character development in the first half of the book. A great plot. Searching back to the horrible accident which ruined her hands when she was a child, the hero tried to keep them a step ahead of the killer and find out "who" and "why" he was after her.