Customer Reviews

Dark Eye; Book 16 of the Dark Series {Unabridged} {Audio} {Cd}

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I've been a huge fan of William Bernhardt's for many years, especially his Ben Kincaid series. Once in a while he tries something different, and with each novel he's getting better and better. DARK EYES, in my opinion, is his best work yet, and I highly recommend it. I've heard it referred to as Silence of the Lambs meets Rain Man, and the person who said that hit the nail right on the head!

Susan Pulaski is a psychologist who is also grieving the loss of her husband, which results in her becoming an alcoholic though she's not yet ready to admit it. After a violent incident that happened during one of her drinking binges she winds up in detox and then things go from bad to worse. She loses her job, her house, and custody of her niece who she's been raising for years. Desperately trying to get her life back in order she asks for her job back, but all she gets to be is a consultant on the case of a crazed serial killer obsessed with the works of Edgar Allen Poe who is kidnapping & killing young girls. He sends coded messages that even the experts can't solve.

Then she meets Darcy O'Bannon, a twenty-five year old autistic savant, who just happens to be the son of her boss Chief Robert O'Bannon, and her life changes. Darcy is able to solve these coded messages and together the two of them try to find a way to catch this killer. The relationship between these two characters is so touching that I was simply mesmerized by it, as well as the whole story.

I've read many, many novels in my day and finding a story in which I feel so much compassion for the characters doesn't happen everyday, but it did in this novel. I was so taken in by them that I could help but cry at the end. I think an author who can write like that has a truly great gift, and William Bernhadrt has definitely become that type of author.

DARK EYE will scare you out of your wits, make you laugh, then make you cry and you won't want it to end. Do yourself a favor and read it today.

Janet Slezak

Our heroine is a talented (and alcoholic) psychological profiler for the Las Vegas PD. Since the death of her husband, she's been a bit of a loose cannon--and for that, she loses custody of her teenage niece and her job. She fights back, albeit gradually, against these setbacks and eventually joins the LVPD in its pursuit of an elusive serial killer.

On the plus side: the characters are believable, tastefully flawed, and likable. The insight into autism injected into the narrative is not overbearing, and it adds pathos to the typical Dr. Watson character that is almost ubiquitous to stories of this kind. The writing is fair, and the pacing is smooth and natural. Lastly--in a genre filled with all sorts of horrible crimes, the antagonist in this story still comes up with some torture methods that elicit a visceral response.

On the minus side: It's a bit predictable with a final showdown that seems highly improbable. One of my biggest complaints against books of this type is when the motives behind the criminal's deeds are farfetched and contrived. I just don't think someone would get this delusional about a particular author and start mimicking fictional crimes--yet still have a regular job where no one suspects he/she has a lair where all sorts of terrors are inflicted on unsuspecting vicims.

If you're on a plane, give this one a read. It'll keep your attention. If you're looking for something a bit more intellectual, try Val McDermid or Denise Mina.

First, I have to say that I have read, and loved, most of William Bernhardt's previous work. Next, let me say that I despised this one! I should never have even finished it because so much of it made my skin crawl, but I kept hoping it would, somehow, redeem itself. It never did. There are certainly readers who will love this type of grisly tale, but I'm sure that many of us, familiar with Mr Berhardt's earlier books, will be stunned when they try to get into this one. It was impossible to care what happened to any of the characters....perhaps because there were so many of them.

I was a Bernhardt "virgin" before this book, and it's made me want to read all his others, in spite of the fact that they'd have different protagonists.

I understand most of his books feature Ben Kincaid,an attorney, and his office staff, but this one features a protagonist named Susan who is fighting many battles, most of them pretty intense.

For one, she is battling depression over the loss of her husband. This one battle is pretty significant, as it either leads to or exacerbates all her other challenges. The reader isn't clued in to how her husband died until really late in the book, and that's just as well because it would be a distracting revelation earlier. When this revelation does take place, there's so much else going on that it loses some of its distracting potential and becomes instead what it really should be: simply an explanation so that we can gauge what Susan is dealing with in her mind and NOT spend a ton of time thinking about the husband himself.

Another battle she is fighting is against her alcoholism, and I must admit that several times I wanted to just toss the book against a wall because I really disliked Susan. I mean, REALLY disliked her. It's tough to like someone who is so firmly situated in a denial phase, someone who not only refuses to acknowledge how much trouble SHE is in, but also how much pain she is causing everyone around her. When she begins to work with Darcy, an autistic savant, I want to yell at him "run fast! run far! she can only bring you great pain and upheaval!" But of course, all of this is pretty much what the family and friends of alcoholics go through: pain and upheaval, to put it very mildly. Susan is at her most frustrating, and her most human, when she (time after time after time after. . .) says or thinks that one little drink will just take the edge off. One little drink won't hurt anything at all. And why shouldn't she drink? After all, she reasons, she's had a bad day. A very bad day.

Her battle to get that niece back after she is removed from Susan's home is one I found particularly heartbreaking, but not because I wanted Susan to get custody of her niece. I found myself cheering each time Susan's attempts to get her niece back failed. An excellent cop and a great person most of the time with Darcy, Susan is a failure as a custodial "parent" to her niece. There are hints of what that niece might have been exposed to during the time she lived with Susan after the hubby's death. And Susan's inability to cope even to the minimal point of understanding the reality of her situation means that she is the worst person to be caring for a teenager who's already experienced loss and needs stability and compassion rather than upheaval and neglect.

You might think I hate this protagonist, but the opposite is true. I hated her blindness and her unwillingness to confront her reality, but that made her an excellent protagonist. I would imagine she is like many alcoholics: blind to the consequences of her actions, very much willing to play the victim, refusing to do what is right for others and focusing only on her own needs and desires. In other words, she's a "realistically-drawn" protagonist.

The story is excellent. It's beautifully constructed and suspenseful. There's enough humor in it to make the tough stuff (and there's lots of tough stuff, as you can imagine) bearable over long periods. I really liked the switching back and forth between Susan, Darcy, and the killer. That gives the reader a chance to understand each character in a way that makes Susan the primary protagonist, but not the only person of interest. I fell half in love with Darcy, and I even found a tiny bit of sympathy in my heart for the killer.

If this one novel is any indication, Mr. Bernhardt has a knack for drawing realistic characters who engage the reader on a more than "Oooo, I love this person" level. I don't love Susan, but I wish her flawed self lots of good luck in the future. That's something, considering how difficult a character she is to like at all.

Kudos, Mr. Bernhardt!

If you have insomnia this book will put you to sleep. Gritty unpleasant plot. Not worth reading

This book is awesome as are the dozen or so books I've read written by William Bernhardt. Mr. Bernhardt is a very intelligent, humorous, and clever writer. I highly recommend reading everything he's written. He's now tied with Jeffrey Deaver as my very favorite author - and that says a lot!!!

A serial killer has to grab the imagination in some new way. Once it's revealed early on that the kidnappings and murders are patterned after Poe, it's all "Johnny-One-Note" writing from there. The villain's megalomania was too repetitive. The author's constantly putting "2-Dollar" words into the killer's mouth was wearisome. I believe Poe used complex metaphors, but not esoteric vocabulary. Such word choice does not create either suspense, or fear. Also, the use of an autistic savant to solve crimes is only somewat original ( I've seen it once before). However, Darcy's leaping to conclusions, which I guess is part of being a savant, leaves the reader totally out of the code and crime solving process, and left me cold.

Susan Pulaski was having a hard time bouncing back. She had recently lost her husband and it has spun her into a drinking binge. Susan not only then lost her job but her niece Rachel and it wasn't looking good for her. Then her boss Chief O'Bannon decided to give her a consultant job on the latest murder cause she was the only behavior specialist they had. It only got creepy from there and it was looking like the murderer was wanting to contact her and who knows what else. It was only through the help of Darcy O'Bannon that the pieces of the puzzle seemed to fit together. Darcy the son of her boss was autistic and seemed to be able to figure puzzles out better than the FBI could. So Susan enlisted his help but could they figure out what was going on in time before the murders kept happening or was there something worse about to happen? Would all the ties from the Edar Allen Poe stories make sense? Would she get her neice and her job back or was her life as she always knew it over?

I really was able to feel for Susan for everything she went through. William Bernhardt wrote her character very well and I was pleased with how it all came across. Susan's life could be anyone's and she faced a lot of things most people face, stress, alcohol problems, and trying to stay on top. My other favorite character was Darcy. He had the best photographic memory I have ever read about. I don't know much about autism but it is not something I would wish on anyone.

The plot line always kept me on the edge of my seat. I really liked how well William Bernhardt was able to tie the different Edar Allen Poe stories together with the murders and how they played out. Having an English Literature degree, I really appreciate what he was able to do. Now I didn't care for the murders but how he was able to know so much and do so much research it was completely fascinating to me. I had a difficult time putting this down.

I would recommend this book to anyone who loves Poe stories and doesn't mind a few descriptive details here and there. It is a great read but don't be surprised if you are becoming more watchful of what you do.

In a departure from his Ben Kincaid series William Bernhardt spins a tale about a psychotic serial killer loose in Vegas.
I thought it was riveting and suspenseful. It moved at a good pace. The characters had depth enough that you could understand how they felt.
I enjoyed this novel and am pleased that Bernhardt decided to go with something a little different.

Recommended

I've read and liked Bernhardt before, but IMO this one is a real stinker and not worthy of his talents. The heroine ? is not a bit likeable, in fact I found her disgusting in more ways than one. She did not act like a professional, yelling and talking when she should have not spoken. Also, why is Patrick in this? We're led to believe he is a better profiler (more experienced since he wrote the book) and yet he seems to be there for her to gawk at and to supply a love interest. Like one of the others who commented I am still hanging in there since I want to see how much worse it can get. Mr. Bernhardt, please don' t do any more serial killers; it just is not your genre. BTW, Capitol Murder was another one where the author seemed to enjoy writing like a Romance novelist, with the ridiculous sex being over the top. Grrr.