Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!, May 27, 2005
Stacy Killian was introduced to us in SEE JANE DIE. She was a tough smart dedicated detective until the events in the other book. I really didn't care for SEE JANE DIE but I wouldn't have missed this one for the world. Stacy has moved to New Orleans to attend college, she was burnt out and wanted to change her life. But the cop in her just won't die.
Spencer Malone is a detective on the NOPD. He has just been cleared of a wrongfull theft in his dept. And when he comes back they let him choose where he wants to go to avoid a law-suit. He may have been slow to realize how much he loves being a cop, but now he knows what he has to loose and this affair has made him determined to be the best cop he can be.
They meet when Stacy's next door neighbors are murdered. Stacy can't let it go and if there is any chance she might be able to catch the killer she will use everything she's got. Even putting her life on the line. While Spencer thinks the boyfriend killed them, Stacy is sure it has to do with the role-playing game her friends were into. The White Rabbit is a game about Alice in wonderland, however in this dark version the winner must kill all of the other players.
Stacy meets the game's designer and his family. She is drawn into this weird family and gets caught up in the game which is played in real time. As more bodies appear linking Leo, the game's maker, to the deadly game Shannon finds he needs Stacy's insight. Is Leo the killer or is someone trying to kill him?
The victims and suspects multiply rapidly. This is a fast paced novel with unexpected twists and turns. The killer is not revealed until the end. This is one of Erica Spindler's best. I read it in one sitting.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Her Best Work Yet, June 9, 2005
Erica Spindler has built her career upon the unexpected. Her earlier work was in the romance field; she has gradually transformed herself into an author more closely associated with mysteries and, more specifically, romantic suspense. Spindler isn't afraid to vary characters and locales from book to book, and even where she revives a familiar character --- as in her latest novel --- Spindler does so with a change of place and circumstance.
KILLER TAKES ALL heralds the return of Stacy Killian, first introduced to the reading public in SEE JANE DIE. Killian has left behind her occupation as a Dallas, Texas homicide detective. Now pursuing graduate studies in English at the University of New Orleans, she is hoping to get her life on track and forget the violence of her past life and the heartbreak that it has caused her. Killian, however, is an unwilling and unwitting magnet for trouble. Her relatively idyllic life is abruptly shattered when the neighbors who share the other half of her shotgun double are brutally and mysteriously murdered while Killian sleeps, unaware, next door. Killian had become friends with the women, a factor that increases her moral sense of outrage one-hundredfold.
She begins her own de facto investigation almost immediately, much to the chagrin of New Orleans Police Detective Spencer Malone, one of the homicide police officers assigned to the case, and is quickly (if somewhat improbably) running laps around him and his partner, Detective Tony Sciame. Killian herself is soon warned off of her investigation by an anonymous attacker, an incident that makes her all the more determined to continue pursuing it. Her most significant discovery revolves around the fact that one of the victims was involved in White Rabbit, a shadowy role-playing game with extremely dark overtones. She does not believe that it is entirely coincidental that the co-creator of White Rabbit is currently residing in New Orleans.
Leonardo Noble, a legendary genius whose creations have earned him a fortune, resides in a brooding mansion several blocks from the French Quarter. His household is a quiet but seething menagerie of personalities that includes himself, his ex-wife and business partner, and his teenaged daughter, a genius in her own right whose brooding demeanor conceals some secrets of her own. Noble has received anonymous messages that seem to be connected to the murders of Killian's neighbors. Yet Noble and everyone in his household soon appear to be suspect in some way. As Malone and Killian find themselves unofficially and reluctantly working together, more murders occur --- foretold by cryptic notes --- and it becomes clear that someone is using the White Rabbit game as a vehicle for real-world mayhem. Anyone can be a victim --- and anyone can be the murderer.
Spindler continues her practice from her past mystery novels of doing a number of things quietly but extremely well. She is able to effectively weave a web of suspicion over a great number of characters, gradually eliminating suspects --- by mortality or otherwise --- but making it almost impossible to predict the outcome. Spindler also nicely balances her story and characters against the backdrop of New Orleans, that most exotic of settings. It is easy to forget that there is more to New Orleans than the French Quarter, that it is but one neighborhood in a city full of them, each possessing their own unique personality. Spindler never forgets this, taking the reader on a tour of the multifaceted personalities of streets and people making up the city --- and her tale is richer for it.
KILLER TAKES ALL is perhaps Spindler's best work to date, and one that hopefully will lead to further tales of Killian.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
So-So, June 2, 2006
I didn't think this was one of her better books. I found there to be too much reliance on RPGs, and for readers who aren't familiar with them, a good portion of the book leaves you in the dark about what's going on.
I didn't care much for Stacy in the previous book, and I found her to be particularly annoying in this book. Being an ex-cop, she should've had more understanding as to why she wasn't being included in the case as a civilian, and I found it irritating that she kept forcing the issue. I also didn't care for her cocky, condescending attitude towards the cops. Spencer and Tony weren't much better -- particularly Tony. It seemed that every time Stacy made one of her stupid smug comments towards Spencer, he'd laugh along with her and jump to her defense at the expense of his buddy. Great partner. I wouldn't want that guy watching my back.
When I start reading a book, I usually come up with a few characters who are possible culprits and hope the rest of the book will lead me to someone I never even thought about. Telling you that three characters are guilty before you actually find out it's the fourth one makes the author look like she's too lazy to wrap up all these red herrings and loose ends...particularly since all four were obvious from the start.
I also didn't care much for the Heather Graham style of writing, where the words "hell and "damn" are randomly thrown in throughout the book to emphasize that the characters are mature, upset or angry. It makes them sound like idiots.
Not her best, but still worth the read.
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