Customer Reviews

CSI: In Extremis

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have read all of the other CSI novels and this one just wasn't as good as the others. Admitedly this was the first CSI by this author but it was too heavy on procedures and too little on plot or character development.

I eagerly awaited this book after reading & enjoying all the other C.S.I. (Las Vegas) novels. Although the author is obviously extremely knowledgeable about forensic science and writes very well, he did not produce a book I enjoyed. There was no real crime-solving plot but a lesson in conducting field investigations. The villain was an interesting man, one that I could regard with amazement for his talent and training while despising him for his lack of humanity. It would have been nice to know why his target had been chosen and exactly what his plan had been.

I have given this book 5 stars for scientific content and 1 star for enjoyment, which averages to 3 stars. Some people will love it. I didn't, but I did admire it.

After reading and enjoying most of the previous CSI novels by Max A. Collins, I was eagerly awaiting Mr. Goddard's In Extremis. Unfortunately, every aspect of this book disappointed.

The plot is weak, weighed down by textbook details on firearms, ammunition, and technical aspects of crime scene investigation and equipment unfortunately related mostly via unrealistic dialog between seasoned investigators. Since Mr. Goddard relies heavily on dialog to tell the story, a new rookie character would have served him well for exposition.

Also, the characters' voices, especially Grissom's, Catherine's and Brass's are off, and technically, the writing (peppered with adverbs, unnecessary dialog tags, overwriting, and repetition) is poor.

Had I not wanted to give this first CSI novel by Mr. Goddard a chance, I would not have read beyond the second chapter. I did make an effort, but finally gave up half way into Chapter 14.

I've read all the other CSI: books and this one was a little to technical for me to keep up with. I'm not familiar with guns and gun terminology so I had to keep rereading parts or just skipping over them. and as stated in other reviews there wasn't much of a plot. I do look forward to more books though.

Of all of the books out there based on the original CSI series, this is the only one I cannot recommend. The other books, all by Max Allen Collins, have a much better understanding of the television characters. The other books don't leave things hanging. Ken Goddard left several things unanswered. Whether the criminal is captured or not, in the other books, the reader learns the answers to his/her questions. Unfortunately, the reader does not have this luxury with "In Extremis."

I like how Grissom (and Goddard in the intro) remind us that while evidence-gathering procedures are valuable and important, CSIs are scientists and they're supposed to be thinking about what they're seeing. When the characters begin to think outside the box, the book kicks up several notches -- with CSI intellect on one side and an icewater-veined hunter-killer on the other. Like the storm that is gathering throughout the course of this book, the story builds slowly, and then it breaks out - with all the mayhem I enjoy in Goddard's books.

I had a very hard time slogging through this book. I have enjoyed almost all of the titles in the series very much, and am more than a little disapointed. It reads like a how-to on feild work, dedicating not one but two entire pages on how the characters applied stickers to the vehicle before they photographed it. I can understand the sentiment behind this work- real CSIs are not like the ones we see on television, but that's the whole point of suspension of disbelief- to imerse oneself in fiction. That may be a bit too much to ask of a fiction novel, I suppose. Author gets points for sheer thoroughness, but I fell cheated out of what could've been a very compelling story. Put the technical explanations away, and allow the reader to get lost in the story- not the jargon.

This is an interesting book by Ken Goddard, and if you love the details of the forensics work, you'll like this book. I thought it was a little heavy on the nitty-gritty of the investigation and a little light on story and plot, but if you're a CSI fan, you will probably enjoy it. I did.

Isaac Asimov once defended his no-frills literary style against elitist criticism by asserting that what he brought to the table was a gift for clarity (and indeed, he expressed complex ideas with laser-sharp and easy to follow precision).

Mr. Goddard aspires to that kind of clarity here, but falls far short with technical descriptions involving math, computer projections and vectors that can pull up short even one who has a knack for following all that stuff. What IS clear is his attempt to create the literary equivalent of a "bottle" story -- locale limited to the crime scene and the lab, few other meaningful settings, and those, I think, only at the very end -- and show Our Heroes in a scientific Race Against the Clock.

The drawback is twofold: First, there's not all that much at stake. There's a professional assassin unable to get away from a mountaintop locale, and if Our Guys don't solve the mystery of who's responsible for what in a "hail of bullets" crime scene at a nearby stakeout site, he'll get away. Not get away to do something bad like kill an innocent or deliver a bio-hazard into "the wrong hands," just get away. Second: There's very little human drama, and it's the balance of shattered lives against the technical road to justice that has always been the trick to a CSI mystery -- to say nothing of those cameo, yet cumulative glimpses into the humanity of the CSIs themselves.

Goddard does seem to have a handle on the regular characters in terms of attitude and tone ... but for the most part they lack depth outside of their scientific curiosity; and this is made manifest in the long technical and expository speeches he gives them to rattle off -- often peppered with internal sidebars, like this one, set off by dashes -- that keep ironically violating the verisimilitude he's trying so hard to maintain; because for all his veteran CSI knowhow (Goddard was one in real life), real people, even real science people, simply don't talk that way. Even allowing for the inevitable neatening process of art, that gives fictional characters the ability to be unusually articulate and concise, Mr. Goddard way overindulges the literary license.

It's not a horrible book, and if you like the CSI universe enough, perhaps not even a dull one ... but it makes you miss the (seeming) ease with which Max Allan Collins managed to walk the tightrope with all his previous CSI novels ... and makes you appreciate his openness in acknowledging Matthew V. Clemens as his researcher and co-plotter. I can't imagine a more difficult TV series to wrangle into satisfying tie-in novels, because the template is SO restrictive ... and reading Ken Goddard's noble but labored misfire puts into perspective just how artful the Collins books are, and how deceptive their easy flow.

This was one of the more interesting CSI books I've read. This book joined Grissom and his team in what was believed to be a rather less than simple reconstruction of a shooting that turned into far more than any of them expected. My only qualm with this book is the limited insights into the killer's mind and motives. The ending left me distinctly dissatisfied as it gave no final answers as to 'why' behind the killer's actions, even from his own perspective though there were tantalizing hints that made one wonder.