7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Pretty good first effort but not up to Ms. Cornwall's writing!, May 24, 2008
This review is from: Sequence (A Dr. Alexandra Blake Novel) (Mass Market Paperback)
I enjoyed this book very much but thought we had a few too many side trips into Dr. Alex Blake's past and current romantic life. The descriptions, forensics and police and crime scene procedurals were pretty well done.
Dr. Alexandra Blake is in her mid-thirties and has a two-year fellowship at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), a real place by the way. They have a new boss come in, Jack Wiatt who is a military guy who is disappointed he did not get the job as head of the FBI that he wanted. The first thing he does he start trying to make the AFIP more of a forensic investigative unit that the research center they've been. Alex is an M.D. and a Ph.D. and has been investigating the 1918 Spanish flu virus by using a body of a woman that was found well preserved in some permafrost.
However, with a serial killer on the loose killing women around military bases, Alex is soon called in to crime scenes and autopsies and various other forensic investigation processes. As she copes with that and her "real" job, she also meets a Texas congressman that she begins a romantic liaison with. To complicate matters, another murder is committed by the serial killer plus another homicide that is unrelated to the serial killer but very close to Alex and her new lover.
Well-written and pretty exciting. Could be a little faster paced but well done overall.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Promising, but the author needs to work on her craft, November 25, 2007
This review is from: Sequence (A Dr. Alexandra Blake Novel) (Mass Market Paperback)
Some earlier reviewers have criticized the slow pace of this book. Frankly, that in itself does not especially bother me. I've just finished rereading all the Dorothy L. Sayers books and stories about Harriet Vane and, almost peripherally, Lord Peter Wimsey. By current standards, they are glacially slow, but sheer quality more than makes up for leisurely pace.
Other reviewers look askance at Ms. Andrews' habit of using dialog to provide background information. If that were a fatal flaw, then we must toss out the works of everyone from Homer to Aeschylus to Shakespeare to the perpetrators of the latest CSI Oshkosh.
The book has even been criticized for being a not very thrilling thriller and a not very suspenseful suspense story.
There is some truth in each of these criticisms. If fault must be apportioned, then much should go to the editor whom Ms. Andrews names and thanks in her acknowledgments at the end of the novel. That editor should, somewhere between submission and publication, have taken Ms. Andrews aside, sat her down and told her some hard truths about professional pacing and dialog. The printed text, alas, strongly suggests that she did nothing of the kind.
Let me toss in a pet peeve of my own. On the cover of the paperback edition a quotation from a professional reviewer states, "Plenty of excitement for fans of forensic-based thrillers in the Reichs and Cornwell mold." Well, in my opinion, not really. Yes, there certainly is some scientific clue-hunting, but it hardly serves as the central core as it does with Reichs and in the earlier Cornwell books.
If I have been a slightly dismissive of the faults named by others, it is not because I disagree with them. It is because it strikes me that these faults are secondary in nature and arise from a deeper fault. I think this book is not entirely successful because Ms. Andrews has aimed too high rather than too low. I think that into the 310 paperback pages of "Sequence," Ms. Andrews has shoehorned not a single novel, not even two, but at the very least three separate novels--or rather what should have been published as three separate novels after Ms. Andrews had polished her stories and broadened them out so they could stand on their own.
Every mystery novel draws in a series of strings for the purpose of tying them together in a satisfying knot at the end. There are simply too many strings in this book. They include but are not limited to the tough new boss string, the woman in a man's profession string, the line department vs. the politicians string, the insecure woman torn between two lovers string, the other woman string, the public service vs. private profit string, the military vs. civilians string, the old sins generate current pains string, the thrill and drudgery of scientific discovery string, the push-pull on the museum string. Those who have read it will know what I mean when I write that there are too many murders in this book. There are so many strings that Ms. Andrews proved unable to gather them into a single knot, with the consequence that "Sequence" comes to an end at least three times and in three separate chapters.
Now, it seems to me that aiming high by jamming too much stuff into a book is a considerably lesser fault than generating a single inadequate idea and straining to stretch it into novel length. It is a fault that can be overcome by analysis, self-criticism and sheer hard labor at her new craft of wordsmithing fiction.
Where others see faults, I also see potential. On the basis of that potential, I give this book four hopeful stars.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Good Thriller, August 1, 2006
Lori Andrews' debut fiction thriller is a fast-paced and suspenseful page-turner that will please fans of Patricia Cornwall and Kathy Reich.
The main character, Dr. Alexandra Blake, is a geneticist working for the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Alex spends her days mapping genetic sequences of deadly viruses in the hope of unlocking their secrets and creating a vaccine to protect soldiers from potential bio weapons.
When a vicious serial killer begins preying on women with political or military connections, Alex's boss orders her to drop her research and take part in a no-holds-barred criminal investigation. With the FBI off the case, and under intense political scrutiny, Alex must help catch the elusive killer before he can strike again. When Alex is drawn to a secretive Congressman whose ex girlfriend just happens to be the current director of the FBI--and whose husband is later found murdered--she finds herself in a dangerous situation with no idea who is trustworthy or who may be hiding a deadly secret.
Sequence features a multi-dimensional main character written by an author who obviously knows the ins and outs of genetic research extremely well. The wickedly devious criminal is spine-chillingly realistic, and the plot is sufficiently full of twists and turns to satisfy any fan of the scientific/forensics thriller genre.
Armchair Interviews says: A well-researched, well-written thriller!
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