Customer Reviews

Picture Me Dead

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

 

 

This is one of the BEST novels I have read in a long time. Heather Graham is one of my favorite authors. I loved this book.

Ashley Montague is a wonderful character. She wants to follow her father into police work. Although she is a talented artist, she has decided to pursue a career is law-enforcement.

When she and some friends take a short trip to the beach, they are delayed by an accident on the road. Later she learns the practically nude man who was hit by a car, is a former friend. The police decide that her friend is a druggie. Ashley, convinced he is not, decides to try to get someone on the force to dig deeper.

Ashley gets recognized for her ability to sketch faces. And she is offered the chance to move to forensics. Which she takes. This brings her into the murder investigation Jake is leading.

Detective Jake Dilessio has moved his houseboat to the pier where Ashley's uncle has his restaurant. Jake is still not over the death of his partner, five years ago.

When they first meet it is not love at first sight, or even like at first sight. But as they wind up caught up in the investigation of a murder, they find their investigations and emotions coming together.

This is a very well thought out plot. I was truly surprised at the twists and turns. The secondary characters and sub plots were entertaining. This is Heather Graham at her best.

This book was a definite disappointment. I nearly didn't finish it because it is very tedious and the actual story doesn't feature enough in comparison to the highly constructed "love affair". In this book, all the typical elements of an average crime story are put together - man and woman feel attracted and repelled by each other, argue a bit and land in bed, woman hears scary footsteps, rooms are searched, there are some wrong leads and a showdown. Yawn.
If those standard elements would at least have been mixed into a good story, then it would have been okay, but unfortunately even that didn't work. The wrong leads seem just as constructed as the love affair and the explanations/solutions for the wrong leads are in many cases just plainly unbelievable. There are too many characters and so in turn the characters are not well developed.
More room is given to the characters' private lives and thoughts and not enough attention is paid to the crimes, which are supposed to be the subject of the book. Those get solved in a by-the-way manner and the solution is delivered in a most uninspired and unsatisfying manner. Much more could have been made out of this story idea.

I enjoy Heather Graham's suspense novels. This book has great primary characters in Jake Dilessio, homicide detective, and Ashley Montague, police academy student, and some very, very suspicious acting secondary characters. The prologue is about what happened to Jake's partner 5 years ago but it keeps the suspense and mystery and we don't know any names!!

Ashley and her two friends, Jan and Karen, take off for Orlando for the weekend and on the way pass a very strange auto/pedestrian accident. The pedestrian is dressed in white briefs only. Ashley who is very observant due both to her rookie status and artistic abilities, notes a figure in black across the road. That weekend and when she gets back Ashley tries to find out more about the accident and discovers to her dismay that the pedestrian is Stuart, an old high school friend of hers. He is in a coma and not expected to recover. Ashley and Stuart's parents cannot believe he would take all the drugs found in his system.

Meanwhile, Jake is called to a scene at a canal where a young woman's badly decomposed body is found. Some of the MO is the same as a serial killer who killed some women 5 years ago but the serial killer is supposedly dead of suicide or if it is the charismatic former preacher "Papa Pierre", he has been in prison the last 5 years for some financial crimes. Jake is determined to find the killer from now and 5 years ago as he believes the same killer murdered his partner Nancy.

As Jake and Ashley meet, argue, fight and learn to work together and trust each other lust and romance explode.

The plots twists and turns and surprises are great!!

A hard-to-put-down read!!

In Miami, Florida, talented artist Ashley Montague attends the police academy while living with her uncle and his girl friend on top of a bar-restaurant he owns near a marina. Homicide Detective Jake Dilessio has just relocated his houseboat to that same marina. When the two first meet, neither likes the other.

Ashley draws the scene of a terrible accident she has seen. Later she learns the victim is a high school friend Stuart Frecias whose body is filled with illegal drugs as he resides in a coma. Ashley believes he would never do drugs insisting something sinister happened while Stuart was undercover working on a story for some rag.

Meanwhile Jake's worst nightmare returns when a woman is found mutilated in the Everglades with the same MO as that of a serial killer five years ago. As he makes no progress, he agrees to look into Stuart's situation. Wondering if Ashley's theory is correct, Jake sees a potential link between his homicide case and that of Stuart even while he and Ashley fall in love and she accepts a job as a forensic artist.

Fans of Heather Graham recognize that her novels always contain gripping suspense and the right portion of love. PICTURE ME DEAD is a strong police procedural romance that grips readers until the final twist. The engaging lead couple is typical of the genre as they initially detest each other, but ultimately love one another. The story line is filled with intrigue, but contains too many turns losing some credibility yet Ms. Graham is so good her audience will finish the novel in one sitting.

Harriet Klausner

Ashley Montague is on vacation with two friends when she witnesses the discovery of a body on a major highway. Haunted by the image of a dark figure watching from the side of the road, Ashley begins to investigate what happened, only to discover that the injured man is her childhood friend. While Ashley struggles to focus on her final weeks at the policy academy, she is distracted by her friend's fate, not knowing yet that his accident is related to the recent discovery of a woman's mutilated body. Investigating that woman's death has fallen to Jake Delissio, a seasoned homicide detective who is haunted by his female partner's apparent suicide. He's just moved his houseboat into a slip outside Nick's Place, a restaurant owned by Ashley's uncle, which is where hero and heroine initially meet and begin their tempestuous relationship.

Picture Me Dead, a romantic suspense novel by Heather Graham, makes heavy use of the author's Florida homeland, but lacks much of the sultry feel that comes with the Miami setting. Who is responsible for the woman's murder? Drug dealers or the cult that had been shut down years before following three other similiar murders? To complicate this matter, Ashley denies her attraction to Jake and struggles with her desire to draw and to serve the public good, then lands a surprising and generously paid position as a forensic artist. She gets the guy, too, but this is a romance and that's supposed to happen.

Unfortunately, this novel is seriously flawed from both its romance and its suspense angles. There is very little chemistry between the two leads and aside from a couple of sensual lines, this pair is seriously mismatched. Other problems include a convoluted mystery diluted with false leads and missteps. While it's generally good to mislead the reader to maintain suspense, there comes a point when too many possible paths will simply cause confusion. For example, around the midpoint of the book, one of Ashley's friends is in apparent danger, and Graham attempts to redirect suspicion to an obvious target. There's no real follow-up, and the narrative simply doesn't allow for logical questions or explanations.

This is the second Graham book in which the heroine had a name that reminded me of a soap opera stereotype that give romances a bad name, and she also has a bad habit of using a lot of secondary characters. This, I believe, is an attempt to round out the lead characters and their lives, but it only contributes to the overwhelming sense of standing in the back of a crowded room. I tolerated this during the initial chapters because I genuinely liked Ashley and her friends as they bantered while traveling, but when the story involved academy students, forensic specialists, detectives, relatives, and more friends, I lost interest in keeping up with everyone. Those characters I did enjoy disappeared, leaving others who were flat and unappealing.

By the time the mystery was revealed, after several poorly placed red herrings, I wanted to throw the book across the room... lucky for me, it had already fallen apart from all the other library reads. Perhaps they were unsatisfied with the story, too.

I could NOT put this book down - it was one of Ms. Graham's best books. The mystery was well played, and suspense non-stop and the paranoia enough to make you doubt your own mother. Top it off with well-written, well-rounded characters (even the background ones) and this is a book sure to please people looking for a good mystery, good suspense, and even those who want a bit of romance to spice things up (although it isn't overly obtrusive). This is the type of book that turned me on to Heather Graham to begin with, and the type I hope she continues to turn out in high numbers. Kudos!

Picture me Dead started out strong, then fizzled off for a few chapters. The romance doesn't start until midway through and there is no flirting or lead in to the sex. The suspense picks up about 2/3 into the book and has you held in anticipation, but many of the red herrings get cleared too early and then it is obvious, at least it was for me who was left as the bad guy.
This would not be a book to read if you have to go visit someone at the hospital unless you enjoy the feeling of someone following you in the parking garage, and that shot of fear that goes with it.
Even though I do not think this is one of Heather Graham's best books, it was a quick read and did have some good suspense that held to the end. Despite my ability to solve the mystery part of it, the average reader who rarely does, will probably think the ending is shocking.
This really is more of a 3 and 1/2 stars, but since that wasn't an option I went for the 4 over lowering the score. It isn't a bad read, just not one of the best.

I am a huge fan of this very talented author and found her latest paperback to be highly engaging. This was really more in my opinion a mainstream suspense novel with romantic tones then an outright romantic suspense. What's the difference you ask? This was not a romance book with a suspense storyline as the vehicle for Ashley and Jake to fall in love with each other. Instead Ms. Graham concentrated on the murder/mystery/suspense of a five year old case that had been "solved". Problem is there has been a new murder that lookes to much like the ones from five years earlier. Is the wrong man in jail, or is he calling the shots from his prison cell?

The characters in this story are great. There are many secondary characters that make up the world that Ashley, and Jake both live in. I feel that they are really all part and parcel of the story. There are a few misleads and red herrings but in the end I was still surprised by just who the bad guy was. Again this was not a strong romantic story. The relationship between Ashley and Jake is not an in-depth one but I felt the chemistry that was between them from the get go. Don't expect "Classic Heather Graham" I think this is just a good example of how this author is growing and changing and perhaps reaching out to a larger readership. I for one am along for the ride to see where she takes us next.

What is with Heather Graham's obsession with the words "hell" and "damn"? She sticks them in at least two or three times on nearly every page, into every conversation, to the point that it comes off sounding like a bunch of pre-schoolers who just learned a new word that Mommy and Daddy told them not to say.

The storyline was so coincidental that it was unbelievable. Ashley and her friends see a bad accident on their way out of town on vacation, and it just happens to be an old friend lying in the road -- a friend Ashley hasn't seen in years, but who she just knows would never turn to drugs, and fights the police on this point, even though the victim was found with a bodyload of heroin in his system. His parents lie to the hospital personnel to allow this person who hasn't seen their son in years to pose as family, to come and go from his hospital room as she pleases when they're suspicious of his accident. The whole thing was just way too contrived to be believeable.

And the "romances" seemed forced as well. Ashley and Jake had absolutely zero chemistry, and the "animosity" between them seemed ridiculous for something as silly as Jake startling Ashley and making her spill her coffee on him. The Karen/Len subplot was stupid and out of the blue, and in the end, even the two remaining characters were hastily paired up to give everyone a partner and a happy ending.

I'll never understand how Heather Graham has become a "New York Times best-selling author," since I've never read anything by her that's been all that good. Her Florida settings and a lack of any other authors I like having new books out are the only reasons I continue to read her.

I waited for this to come out in paperback, couldn't so I bought the hard cover through my book club. MISTAKE! I love all her work, no matter which name she's writing under, but this one is more like a 10 year old decided to write a story. The plot sounds so good, that's the only thing that sounds good. The characters are flighty,dialogue is bad. It's almost like a B rated moive. I wish I had waited and bought it from the used book store. My opinion, don't spend you rmoney, borrow the book. I'm not keeping mine!