Shiver (New Orleans Series) [Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio Cassette]

Lisa Jackson (Author), Joyce Bean (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 4, 2006 | Series: New Orleans Series (Book 3)

Detective Reuben “Diego” Montoya is back in New Orleans. Thanks to years of working with the dark side of society, his youthful swagger is gone, replaced by straightforward determination. He’ll need it, because a serial killer is turning The Big Easy into his personal playground. The victims are killed in pairs – no connection, no apparent motive, no real clues. Somebody’s playing a sick game, and Montoya intends to beat him at it. His only lead is the ex-wife of one of the victims. Abby Chastain is a woman haunted by painful secrets. Twenty years ago she watched in horror as her mother, a patient at the Our Lady of Virtues Mental Hospital, plunged through a window to her death. Abby has always dreaded that she too would one day go insane…especially now, back in this town, where she’s begun to feel watched, as if the devil himself is scraping a fingernail along her spine. Something about Abby – her spirit and her honest fear – gets to Montoya. His gut tells him his prime suspect is innocent, just like it’s telling him there’s something significant about the once-grand hospital now decaying in a gloomy thicket of ancient live oaks. Abby Chastain can help unlock the mystery – if only Montoya can get her to trust him enough to face the ghosts of her past. As more bodies are found in gruesome, staged scenarios and the FBI moves in, Montoya’s in a desperate race to find a killer whose crimes are getting more terrifying, and closer all the time. Plunging deep into a nightmare investigation will uncover a shocking revelation – a deadly connection between Abby and Montoya and an asylum where unspeakable crimes were committed, evil once roamed free, and a human predator may still wait. For the past is never completely gone. Its sins must be avenged, its wrongs righted. And this time Detective Reuben Montoya may pay the price…

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Set in pre-Katrina New Orleans, the new romantic thriller by bestseller Jackson, her first to be published in hardcover, fits all the usual pieces into all the usual holes. A psycho sexual serial killer stalks victims connected to an insane asylum, shut down 20 years earlier but still standing in all its creepy abandonment. Abby Chastain, a portrait photographer on the rebound from a bad divorce, is trying to wean herself off men. Det. Reuben Montoya, the virile, not-by-the-book cop (last seen in 2002's Cold Blooded), is assigned to track down the serial killer. Along the way, Montoya develops—against his better judgment—a soft spot for the libido-tingling Chastain, now in peril because her mother was either murdered or committed suicide at the old asylum just before it closed. Fans of the prolific Jackson (Fatal Burn) should be pleased, but those unfamiliar with the conventions of romance fiction should be prepared for characters who "growl" rather than simply "say" and descriptions of physical beauty along the lines of a "body that wouldn't quit." Author tour. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Jackson, with many best-selling mass-market paperbacks under her belt, nimbly makes the switch to hardcover. Abby Chastain is ready for a change. Again. She had come back to New Orleans, her hometown, during a rocky marriage in search of a fresh start. (Jackson acknowledges that this New Orleans is pre-Katrina, the city as "it once was and will be again.") But her husband, local shock-jock Luke Gierman, fell right back into his old womanizing ways, which lead to a bitter divorce. When Detective Reuben Montoya darkens her door with the news that Luke has been killed alongside a young woman, Abby's emotions run the gamut from apathy to despair. Terror becomes the emotion du jour, however, as Montoya begins to find connections between the two victims, many of them stemming from Our Lady of Virtues, a hospital for the mentally impaired that is set for demolition but that had once been the home of Abby's mother and the place where she fell to her self-inflicted death. Can Montoya do his job as his fondness for Abby grows and as the bodies begin to stack up? Can Abby reconcile the repressed details of her mother's time at the asylum with the facts being uncovered during the investigation? Readers will know the answers soon enough because they won't be able to put this one down. Mary Frances Wilkens
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio Unabridged; Unabridged edition (April 4, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1423315030
• ISBN-13: 978-1423315032
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.2 x 2.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #167,760 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #11 in Books > Books on Cassette > Mystery & Thrillers > Mystery
  • #34 in Books > Books on Cassette > Literature & Fiction
  • #89 in Books > Books on Cassette > General

More About the Author

#1 NYT and USA TODAY bestselling author Lisa Jackson started writing after her sister read an article in TIME Magazine in 1981 about how young mothers were making money writing romance novels. Both Lisa and her sister, Nancy Bush, began their writing careers right then, and lo, these many years later Lisa has published seventy-five plus novels and has no plans to slow down anytime soon.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gripping suspense with ingenious MO, April 18, 2006

By 

Tracy Vest (Northern California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shiver (Hardcover)

Detective Ruben Montoya ("Cold Blooded") is back, investigating the murder of a local shock jock and a female college student headed for a nunnery. Still grieving the loss of his lover Marta, the last thing he wants is to get involved with the prime suspect - the victim's wife Abby Chastain.

As more victims start to pile up, it is obvious that there is a serial killer on the loose, and all points lead to the Our Lady of Virtues convent and mental hospital, where Abby's mother plunged to her death decades earlier. Each set of victims are polar opposites of each other, adding to the mystery. While Ruben does not believe that Abby is the culprit, she is somehow integral to the killer's motivation - finding out why just might get them both killed.

Jackson does a great job keeping the killer under wraps (so much so that we are not aware of him until the final act); throwing out numerous possible suspects. The killer's inspired MO is clever and ingenious. But the revelation of the culprit was a let down after such a gripping tale, marring what could have been a perfect story.

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ROMANCE - SUSPENSE, WHAT MORE COULD YOU WANT?, April 9, 2006

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shiver (Hardcover)

With her first originally published in hardcover romance/suspense novel author Lisa Jackson introduces an over the top psychopathic villain who not only murders but does so in grisly scenarios, leaving scenes that appal even the most jaded investigators. Who he is and why he's doing this is the pivotal question in Shiver.

Set in pre-Katrina New Orleans a prologue paints a terrifying scene. The place is Our Lady of Virtues Mental Hospital where lovely 35-year-old Faith Chastain is incarcerated. She is told that she's delusional, and now she's beginning to believe that's true as the sisters stare at her with "compassionate, disbelieving eyes......And the doctor, cold, clinical, with the bedside manner of a stone monkey, talked to her as if she were a small, stupid child."

Still, she knows someone is in the room and that he will touch her. She panics and tries to escape as she feels his hands upon her. There is only one avenue to freedom - out the window and to the ground below. It is her birthday, and her young daughter, Abby, has come bringing a gift only to see her mother plummet to her death.

Segue now to 20 years later. Abby and her sister, Zoey, are adults - the same age as when their mother died. Abby has married and divorced. Luke had been a confirmed womanizer who even had an affair with Zoey while engaged to Abby. Thus, the sisters are estranged. Abby lives with her cat, Ansel, and makes her living as a freelance photographer. She is haunted by memories of visits to Our Lady of Virtues and her mother's sudden death.

Detective Reuben Montoyo, whom we met in Hot Blooded and Cold Blooded, appears when he is called to one of the most gruesome crime scenes he has ever encountered. Two people are dead - Luke has been shot and a young woman dressed in a bridal gown lies on top of him. Some would like to consider this a murder/suicide, but Montoyo knows better - and so does all of New Orleans when another double murder scene is found.

The detective's only clues lead him to Abby, Luke's widow, and the now deserted mental hospital. Who or what could be capable of such heinous crimes?

Voice performer Joyce Bean delivers a taut, tension filled reading, especially in the opening scenes where Abby is alone in her isolated home and feels that someone may be watching her.

Author Jackson keeps listeners and readers on the edges of their chairs, totally engrossed by a compelling plot line. She's a pro at blending romance with suspense, which continues to earn fans.

- Gail Cooke

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A little disappointed, August 9, 2006

By 

Samantha J. Yates - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shiver (Hardcover)

I love the romantic suspense genre. This was my first Lisa Jackson novel and I'm a little disappointed when comparing it to my other favs in this genre. Here are a few of my gripes:

The story kind of jumps around from character to character, storyline to storyline. It gets to the point where often times you skip a few pages because she's going on and on in an annoying fashion. She transitions from one thing to another, straying from the plot, and goes on about something else for 3-4 pages at a time sometimes. It kind of takes you a minute to realize the point.

The editing is surprisingly poor. I didn't expect to notice as many grammatical problems as I did. I found myself rereading a few sentences that simply didn't make sense. Now the whole book isn't full of typos, but there are enough to notice and make you reread and wonder how such a simple mistake went unnoticed. It gets a little maddening towards the end. I'd say I noticed 10-15 grammatical errors, which shocked me personally for such a popular author

Some of the criminology terms and personalities she uses come off as very fake. She says in the beginning of the book that she created a fictional department and changed some protocol and policies to fit her story. That's fine, but at times, it came off as trying a little too hard with the cop stuff.

Like another review said, the romance really did feel like an afterthought. The book is about 420 pages, and you don't get any romance whatsoever until page 299! It was insane. I kept waiting for it and it kept being put off.

The character development is indeed poor. She writes a lot of flashback memories but at times it's hard to piece them together and make sense of where she's going with it. At other times it simply annoys you that she keeps jumping from one part of the story to another. She refers to a past w/ a woman named Marta for Detective Montoya but never really elaborates on the meaning.

Unlike others in this genre, it's taken me weeks to finish it. With other books, some being 500 pages, I've finished in a matter of 3 days! This one was harder to push through. It was just full of uninteresting parts at times, and definitely not enough of the "romance" part of a romantic suspense.

If you really like this genre, I'd highly recommend Karen Rose. A couple of her books get up to the 500 pg mark but don't let that run you off. You never feel like you're actually reading a 500 pg book. I flew through 3 of her books in less than a week and a half. I'd recommend You Can't Hide, I'm Watching You, and Have You Seen Her? That's also the order in which I liked them. You may want to read "I'm Watching You" first as "You Can't Hide"'s male hero is introduced, but it's not absolutely necessary. You WON'T be disappointed with Rose. She's phenomenal with both the romantic story line, and the crime drama plot. She also doesn't get excessive and make the romantic plot cheesy and fake. Very good author!

Overall, I give Shiver a B for the crime drama aspect and a D for the romance. I'm wondering if some of these 5 star reviews are coming from dedicated Jackson readers, because this novel simply didn't hit the mark. I'm not sure I'll try another Lisa Jackson novel.

Hope this review helped. I went into this book with such excitement(obviously! because I rarely buy hardcover) and came out with huge disappointment. Try Karen Rose instead