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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Just be careful what you stir up.", March 1, 2011
This review is from: The Night Season (Archie Sheridan & Gretchen Lowell) (Kindle Edition)
In Chelsea Cain's latest thriller, "The Night Season," Homicide Detective Archie Sheridan is on the trail of a psychotic killer who uses a most unusual weapon to dispatch his victims. Sheridan has stopped popping pain pills and dutifully attends his psychotherapy sessions. However, he will never forget the torture and humiliation that Gretchen Lowell, known as "the Beauty Killer," inflicted on him. "His scars were as much a part of him as his eye color." This time around, Cain wisely puts Gretchen on the back burner; the "Beauty Killer" makes a brief appearance, but is not the story's central focus.
Archie has his hands full: The dead body of a woman is found on a carousel; skeletal remains that were missing for sixty years have suddenly surfaced; and a nine-year-old boy is missing. At Archie's side is Susan Ward, an aggressive, sassy, and extremely sharp reporter with an aptitude for digging up arcane facts. She writes a "quirky crime roundup column" and is always on the lookout for juicy material. She sports raspberry-colored hair and rainbow striped boots, smokes cigarettes, and wisecracks incessantly. Archie has a soft spot in his heart for the irrepressible Susan, so he gives her more leeway than he would to most reporters.
Meanwhile, a potential catastrophe threatens the city. Two weeks of heavy rains ("the kind of rain that got in your eyes and streamed down your cheeks") have pummeled Portland, Oregon, and the Willamette River is threatening to overflow. Cain maintains an excruciating level of suspense, nicely tying the menace of the rising waters to the search for a serial killer who enjoys watching people die. The scenes depicting the out-of-control flood waters washing away everything in their path are terrifyingly realistic.
Along with Archie, who is daring and heroic, the author showcases the ever lively and curious Susan (who in one scene is so uncharacteristically stupid that readers will want to shake her), the witty and astute medical examiner, Lorenzo Robbins, and Archie's friends and colleagues, Detectives Henry Sobol, Claire Masland, Jeff Heil, and FBI profiler Anne Boyd. Although the novel contains a few formulaic elements that do not quite ring true, they do not detract markedly from the book's entertainment value. "The Night Season" has sharp dialogue, an intriguing plot, a brisk prose style, and effective descriptive writing. This is a sure-fire page-turner and one of Chelsea Cain's most compelling works of fiction to date.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
What happened to a great series?, August 27, 2011
First- make sure you read the first 3 books in this series. One of the few redeeming qualities of this book is getting back into the lives of familiar characters.
Second- Spoilers Ahead!!!
I was very disappointed in this book. The series really focused on the relationship between Archie and Gretchen and their chemistry is very much missed here. Gretchen is in the book almost as an afterthought, as if the author felt she had to get Gretchen in somewhere.
The writing is just loose. The plot doesn't pull you in, and the murder weapon is ridiculous. The main "bad guy" is not fleshed out well at all.
Bottom line...
a sad chapter in what was an exciting series.
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16 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Chelsea....give it up now, March 23, 2011
GOOD LORD!!
I loyally followed this "Heartsick" series from the moment I put the first installment down. I was sucked into the story from the beginning. I pre-ordered the second book, "Sweetheart" with anticipation. It was alright. Then the third book, "Evil at Heart", I was disappointed. Each installment became a little less captivating.
Now this! I read this book with ongoing frustration. What happened here???
This story is so far-fetched in some areas that I had to put it down and take a break more than once. Besides the fact that Chelsea refuses to evolve these central characters in any way, I found the plot ridiculous at best. This series has gone from being a serial killer thriller to being a cheesy detective mystery.
Each book strays farther and farther from realism. I enjoy losing myself in a good fiction book, particularly a thriller or mystery. But it has to have at least a minuscule amount of substance. This book had none.
Archie. The main character, the detective, the victim of Gretchen Lowell and the saint of the criminal world. From the first book to the fourth, he has never managed to evolve as a human being and suffers from severe egotism. Every murder, kidnapping or torture is always his fault. Food and sleep are a crutch and he is incessantly ill. Everyone is always concerned with his well being and he is only concerned with saving the world. There is no depth to this character and I have lost all hope that there ever will be. Even snippets of his therapy sessions reveal absolutely nothing and he insists on keeping the façade of never experiencing emotion. Archie remains the redundant martyr of the story. I'm over it.
Susan Ward. Probably the most irritating character of the entire series. Yes, the ever changing hair color, rebellious attitude and childlike maturity as a grown adult instilled a fair amount of entertainment to the story in the beginning, but this character too has yet to evolve. Time and again she is put into life threatening situations because of her need to tag along like a 5 year old and seek the approval of the detective that she has chased around for 3 years. Her behavior has followed a predictable pattern in every book. So much so that I and everyone else that reads this series could accurately forecast how she will be by Archie's side through every crime scene, be working on two separate news stories that always tie together in the end and act like a frantic dumb a** through every situation WHICH no matter how severe, she never really learns from. Again Chelsea has successfully stifled the growth of the very characters that she has created.
And by the way Miss. Cain, are there anymore natural disasters that are prominent in the Pacific Northwest that you have left to incorporate into your detective series? What's next a tornado? Will the murder weapon be a deadly caterpillar next time? How about when Portlanders go to grab a newspaper, a deadly trout jumps out and rips their faces off? Does that sound anymore ridiculous than an Australian native blue ringed octopus poisoning people around the city?
I hope your next book Gretchen Lowell escapes prison and puts Archie out of his misery. Someone should. Too bad I won't be spending my money to find out.
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