Customer Reviews

Damaged: A Maggie O'Dell Novel (Maggie O'Dell Novels)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A Coast Guard helicopter finds a fisherman's cooler bobbing in the water off the Florida coast. When officials open the cooler, they are surprised to find body parts.

A massive hurricane is heading toward the Gulf of Mexico. FBI criminal profiler, Maggie O'Dell is asked to help on the case and see what she can determine from the body parts. She and Charile Wurth, of homeland security, travel to Pensacola, Florida as the hurricane heads in their direction.

Elsewhere, soldiers who have lost limbs in Afghanistan, are now coming down with some toxic ailment. A number of the soldiers have died and many are very ill. Officials are trying to determine the cause.

Also in Pensecola, undertaker, Scot Larsen has made an agreement with Joe Black so that Black could accept delivery and provide storage for some human body parts that Black would pick up in route to his doctors' conferences.

I enjoyed this story and the characters. The imminent arrival of hurricane Ivan, which has become a cat five hurricane, adds to the suspense. Things would need to be resolved quickly so that Maggie and others would have time to get to safety before they are trapped by the storm.

Alex Kava does a professional job with this thriller. Maggie and Liz Bailey, a Coast Guard dive team member, are intelligent, assertive characters who demonstrate excellent problem solving ability. Scot Larsen is a bumbler who does about everything he could, incorrectly, he is a somewhat interesting comic figure.

Some of the puzzles in the story were too obvious as was the identity of the antagonist. The suspense was in how the person would be caught and how many more victims would fall before authorities stopped him.

I took this book on vacation and enjoyed it thoroughly. I plan to look into other novels by this talented author.

Although we're used to FBI agent Maggie O'Dell as the pursuer of serial killers, she gets a break from that in this book; deployed to Pensacola as a hurricane bears down, she investigates a cooler full of carefully-wrapped body parts that was found floating in the Gulf. The story also is told from the perspective of Liz Bailey, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer who recovers the cooler, and Maggie's "friend," Dr. Benjamin Platt, who is also sent to Pensacola, to investigate a strange epidemic of deaths among hospitalized soldiers who have returned from the Middle East.

The book is good, but not great. The prose is not very tight, and suspense novels, above all, need that. The New York Times has praised Kava's "cliffhanger chapters," but I think they interrupt the story too often. Characterization seems over-simplified and pretty much every person you meet has Drama of some major sort -- nobody is ordinary, which is a little exhausting and also doesn't make for verisimilitude.

One of the pre-release plugs for the book is from an author whose new book I just finished, Lee Child. His quote indicates that Kava's "O'Dell could be Reacher's long-lost twin." I think that does a tremendous disservice to Child's hero, Jack Reacher. The Child book was tremendously suspenseful and really, really fun to read, while this one was a bit of a chore. Like a British drawing room farce, you're waiting for the characters to find out what the other ones know to solve the crime. For me, at least, that doesn't create suspense so much as it does frustration.

This is the 8th novel in the Maggie O'Dell series. I have not read any of the earlier books so I can't compare it to the others in the series. It is usually a mistake to jump into a long-running series without reading the earlier books. A good writer grows the characters over time and it is difficult to put that into a later book without boring all the long-term fans to tears. I knew I would enjoy this book more if I had read others in the series but was too impatient to get to this book.

The story in this book definitely stands on its own -- you don't need to read any of the earlier books to follow along. But there are references in this book to past cases and relationships (especially Maggie's boss) and I think having read the rest of the series would have given me a deeper connection to Maggie. So my advice to potential new readers of this series is to not be as impatient as I was -- start at the beginning and catch up to this book.

One of the reasons I was interested in this book is that I love thrillers with strong women characters. This book has two: Maggie O'Dell and a Liz Bailey, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer. I liked Liz as much as Maggie.

There were two interesting twists to the plot in this book. First, the weather is almost a character on its own and is a critical part of the plot. At the beginning of the book, a hurricane is a few days away and heading for Pensacola. Never having lived in hurricane country, I wish the author had painted a better word picture of what it is like -- both atmospherically and socially -- in a Gulf Coast city when a hurricane is on the way. There was some but it felt more like the author was telling the reader what was happening rather than showing.

The other different aspect is that the reader knows (or can easily guess) who the killer is fairly early in the book. Much of the suspense is in knowing that the killer is using a fake name and wondering if he will get caught before he moves on. Although Maggie is a profiler, the investigation is pretty straight forward and doesn't seem to involve much profiling. There is a parallel medical mystery involving Maggie's friend Col. Benjamin Platt. I thought it was interesting and I wish it had been written with more detail.

This was a good thriller but not a great one. Even with so many things happening (approaching hurricane, mystery illness, body parts and killer), the book didn't have that feeling of urgency and suspense that keeps the reader turning the pages late into the night or ignoring chores to read just one more chapter. It was pleasant and enjoyable but the "thrills" were limited to a fairly short portion of the book. I think if I had read enough of the books to have more of an emotional connection with Maggie, I would have enjoyed it more. The book also felt a little short for all the different characters involved and all the stuff going on. Even so, I like the character enough to go back and read more of the series.

This is the second book I've read this spring that involves the motive for the murders. I liked the other book better but saying which one that is would give too much of the plot away and I don't like to spoil book endings.

Bottom line: If you are new to the series as I was, read some or all of the earlier books first so you feel a deeper connection to Maggie and you will enjoy this more. If you are a long-time fan, I think you will probably like it. I just don't know how it stacks up against the other books in the series.

Kava's series starring Maggie O'Dell started out with a bang, but it's been sputtering along for the last couple of offerings, and I think has finally run out of gas.

In this episode, O'Dell's rushed to Pensacola, Florida into the path of an oncoming killer hurricane to investigate the discovery of body parts found floating in a cooler in the Gulf of Mexico, that cooler having been spotted and retrieved by the crew of a Coast Guard rescue helicopter.

At the same time, her friend (romantic interest?) Doctor Benjamin Platt is there trying to discover why wounded soldiers are dying from an undiagnosed infection; a mortician is dealing with a mysterious stranger in body parts for medical seminars; a retired naval officer (and father of the Coast Guard rescue swimmer who discovered the floating cooler) is running a snack cart; and the hurricane inexorably approaches the scene.

The problem here is that there's too much going on, yet not enough. Too many disparate story elements that aren't adequately or skillfully tied together cohesively. O'Dell's solution to her case seems more due to luck and happenstance than any real skill or deductive reasoning on her part. At the end, she's simply in the right place at the right time.

No dramatic tension at all is built up in this story. There's no sense at all that the victims of the body parts scam are actual people, so there's no sense of sympathy for them or horror at what's happened to them. They're simply ciphers; parts, not people. Further, I can't for the life of me figure out why the FBI would be getting involved in a local crime case of this nature to begin with. Where's the federal law that's been violated?

The final confrontation between O'Dell and the bad guy is about as flat as it gets; completely undramatic, almost a throwaway. Like Kava simply had to complete a checklist item: "Maggie captures bad guy. Check."

I think my two stars are generous, frankly.

DAMAGED is my first Maggie O'Dell book, though it's the eighth in the series. On the whole I prefer not to have a lot of back-story in series books and Damaged satisfies on that count, though the downside is that I didn't feel I knew Maggie all that well by the end of the book.

A Coast Guard team from Pensacola, Florida finds a fishing cooler floating in the ocean and it turns out to be filled with body parts. Maggie, an FBI profiler fresh off a bloody case, is enlisted by the Deputy Director of Homeland Security, her friend Charlie Wurth, to investigate the body parts case. It's not exactly clear why a profiler would be needed on this sort of case but it does put Maggie right in the eye of the Category 5 hurricane bearing down on the Panhandle--and in the same city as her friend and possible romantic interest, Colonel Benjamin Platt. The Colonel is investigating a virus attacking wounded soldiers in an army hospital there.

The other thread of the story involves the family of the Coast Guard rescue swimmer, Liz Bailey. Her brother-in-law Scott has a new, very creepy business associate turning up at odd hours at Scott's funeral home.

There are a number of quirky characters in the book but aside from Maggie, the one with the most depth is the rescue swimmer, and I'd like to read more about her. Maggie, as one would expect, is a tense and complicated character. Will she and Platt ever take a chance on their relationship?

Author Alex Kava dishes up the story in short, tight chapters that move from one character and plot thread to the next. It keeps the reader turning pages but doesn't allow much depth--I'd like to see a more extended style from her. While many books seem to be fifty or a hundred pages too long, DAMAGED errs in the other direction and doesn't provide enough sustained tension. All the ends are tied up but it's not really a thriller. The hurricane theme may have been done and done again, but since the author chose to play the hurricane card, we could have done with more "storm coverage."

I understand that the Maggie O'Dell series has its ardent fans, so I think it's safe to say that DAMAGED is not the place to start. It's a good light read, but misses on a few important aspects. Three stars.

Linda Bulger, 2010

This is the 7th in Alex Kava's Maggie O'Dell series. In this outing, FBI Agent O'Dell is called in when a Coast Guard Search and Rescue team finds a large cooler floating in the Gulf of Mexico. The thinking is that a ship was perhaps disabled or, worse, sinking. But the only thing found is the cooler. Contrary to protocol, team members open the cooler to find neatly wrapped body parts. O'Dell is told to find out what happened. In the meantime, there is a Category 5 hurricane heading toward Florida.

Kava has three distinct story lines. One is Maggie O'Dell's story. Another is what is causing the epidemic of deaths of wounded soldiers whose limbs were amputated. While the third is an-almost sleazy funeral director and his new friend, Joe Black, and what they're up to. By the end of the book, Kava cleverly ties the three story lines together not by happenstance, but in a way that makes sense.

This is a real page turner, with plenty of action, and will keep even the most jaded reader reading into the wee hours of the morning. This is a plot-driven novel rather than a character-driven one. The characters are all interesting, and the reader will want to know more about them. Since I haven't read the first six books in this series, I don't know whether these are on-going characters and thus fleshed out in the earlier books or whether Kava merely focuses on her plots rather than her characters - either way it works.. Kava gives just enough information about O'Dell to make me want to know more and to drive me to want to read the first six books in the series. Even if you like your novels to provide you with every detail about the characters, you'll enjoy this read because it is, as the saying goes, a real barn burner.

The one thing I didn't like was the ending. It felt like the author had written more (or should have), but decided to delete the rest of the chapter. In fact, I checked the next page to see where the rest of the chapter had gone. The ending felt rushed, almost as if Kava got bored with the manuscript or was on a deadline. Yes, O'Dell solved her case, the doctor found out what was killing the soldiers, and the funeral director and his buddy were caught out, but I wanted something more about the characters before the book ended.

Damaged is the eighth book in the series featuring Maggie O'Dell, an FBI special agent and profiler. This installment focuses on a case in Pensacola, Florida, where the Coast Guard has discovered a cooler full of body parts floating in the ocean. Charlie Wurth, the deputy director of the Department of Homeland Security has requested Maggie's assistance since local law enforcement resources are completely tied-up preparing for an approaching hurricane. Simultaneously, Maggie's good friend and potential love interest Colonel Benjamin Platt has also been sent to Pensacola to identify a mysterious virus that is killing American soldiers.

Along with these characters from earlier books, new characters in Damaged include a Coast Guard Search & Rescue swimmer, Liz Bailey, whose family includes a brother-in-law who owns a funeral parlor and is somehow enmeshed in the body parts, her father who takes on a featured role in the story, and finally, of course, the villain.

Damaged moves at a very quick pace, and many chapters are only a few pages long. This facilitates enough inclusion of each of the characters to define their roles, but provides only a surface understanding of their personalities and motivations. As with any good storm story, as the hurricane approaches Pensacola, the mystery is resolved, including a kidnapping, daring rescue, and brief introduction of a possible love triangle between Maggie, Charlie, and Ben.

The character development and suspense is limited, the strength of Damaged is its action-adventure and pace. The fast, almost staccato tone moves the reader quickly between different viewpoints of the people surrounding the crime and neatly ties everything up in a semi-believable conclusion.

It's summer and summer is a nice time to read a book that doesn't require much thought or concentration. In fact, I've been reading this book several times while we were out sailing. It's an easy book to read, and unfortunately, an easy book to put down.

At the beginning of the story, a Coast Guard team is sent out to investigate a possible capsized boat that turns out to be a cooler filled with wrapped body parts. The rescue swimmer manages to bring it up to the helicopter, even in the face of weather turning bad, because she is out to impress the group that she has recently joined. Maggie O'Dell ends up being sent to the area that is on alert for a hurricane pointing at them as a sort of punishment from her boss. And her boyfriend, Benjamin Platt, is sent off on another case with few words.

Lots of stories seem to be converging into one story, the one O'Dell is investigating, of course. This story depends a lot on incredible coincidences and unlikely scenarios which might work in a romantic thriller but not in books of Kava's caliber. Everyone is related to everyone. Everyone is on the verge of running into each other. All of the answers are pretty much present from the beginning. Two people at long distance from each other - off on two separate jobs for two different reasons -- end up within viewing distance.

This book does not develop the character of Maggie O'Dell. She is the same at the end of the novel as she is in the beginning. Nothing is learned by this character and nothing changes in her world. It's a not very interesting mystery with all of the pieces falling into place. At the end of the book she is the same as at the beginning with the possible exception of having found a cure for her motion sickness.

I've read several books by Alex Kava before and have always enjoyed them, in particular, Split Second and A Perfect Evil (Maggie O'Dell Novels). I didn't remember any of her other stories being so light in content as this one or as dependent on wild coincidences in order to make the story come together. In fact, two of her books were shelved in my collection of women's mystery writers using women detectives (some of my favorites are Carol O'Connell, PJ Tracy, and Anne Perry). This is not a book that fits into that collection.

This book is all right but not great. It is interesting, mostly. It is entertaining if you want to read something not very complex or thoughtful.

This is the first of Alex Kava's novels I've read. Starting at the beginning of a series is usually better, but I enjoyed this book anyway. The only problem is that I don't really know Maggie O'Dell's personality well enough to judge whether she is her usual self in this book or not.

The combination of a category 5 hurricane headed for Pensacola Beach, FL with the finding of a container with wrapped body parts in it creates a challenge for Elizabeth Bailey, 27, who is a rescue swimmer and a U.S. Coast Guard veteran. Special Agent Maggie O'Dell is asked to go to Florida to investigate the case and tracks down one of the body parts in the container to a man killed in a storm six hundred miles away. Liz and Maggie are now right in the path of Hurricane Isaac.

At the same time, soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are coming down with an infection that has medical personnel baffled. These soldiers are amputees and many are sick and some have died.

Joe Black, a man who has been showing up at Liz's father's Coney Island hot dog stand, is suspicious and ultimately has a verbal contract with local undertaker, Scott Larsen for the acquisition and delivering of body parts. The market for body parts is apparently booming.


This was a slow story compared to some others I've read. I put it down and picked it up over the course of a weekend, and it wasn't a page-turner for me. I'll read another of Kava's novels to see if I like it any better, but although I enjoyed the book, it wasn't one I really loved. The characters weren't that interesting, other than Walter. He was my favorite and the most colorful. It will be interesting to read other reviews of readers who have read the entire series.

This book was a disappointment for me. First, there are a lot of POV characters. None of these characters felt fully developed. Their stories eventually, sort of, tie together. In the meantime, it's exhausting to follow them all. The plot is all over the place. There is a lot going on in a kind of chaotic mess. None of it really pulls me into the story. Instead, I find myself being shoved in so many directions, so quickly, that I'm never allowed to plant my feet down in any one spot. In the end, I simply didn't care.