Customer Reviews

The Silent Assassin (A Dr. Alexandra Blake Novel)

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It's a commonplace of the mystery form: ex-policemen write police procedurals, lawyers write legal mysteries and doctors write medical thrillers. We're lucky that, in her second offering, the world's foremost expert on legal issues dealing with genetic material uses information from her day job to continue her top-notch series featuring hot blonde geneticist Alexandra Blake. Andrews shows an even surer hand this time around, and the plot crackles and zings as the body count mounts up. The story couldn't be more timely; the first visit of a Vietnamese president to the White House since the Vietnam War took place just after the book was released. Could the true-story subject of this book, trophy skulls brought back from the war by U.S. GI's, have been raised at that meeting? And again, between the story points we get more fascinating details on the building blocks of life and the clues left by our DNA. An exciting, sexy lead character, a plot taken to a frightening extreme, and Andrews' command of cutting edge science add up to a very satisfying read.

Dr. Alexandra Blake works at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology where she uses her knowledge of genetics to find bio-terror vaccines. She is also sometimes called upon to use her medical skills when a situation occurs. When the corpse of a man who died from a bayonet is brought to AFIP Alexandria is able to tell that he recently returned from Vietnam and further investigation into his past shows he helped broker a deal for the U.S. He successfully brokered a deal where Vietnam would sell the U.S. oil reserves, something that was important to the president who saw it as a way of healing wounds between the two countries.

American soldiers stationed in Nam when returning home sometimes brought back Vietnamese skulls with them. Now in a special White House ceremony the items are being returned to the Vietnam government. In one of the skulls, Alexandra finds a note saying that Americans conducted a massacre. Someone breaks into Alexandria's home while she is sleeping and tries to kill her before getting away and her office is ransacked. Her superiors believe it is her knowledge of the massacre that is causing someone to want her dead but the truth is much more explosive.

Although this is only Lori Andrews' second fiction book, her work is reminiscent of Patricia Cornwall novels. The heroine is a strong-willed, caring individual who doesn't hesitate to do what she believes is the right thing. She refuses to be intimidated by those who want to kill her and although she can't see the conspiracy at the highest level of government, when the time comes she makes a decision and acts on it knowing if things go wrong she could end up in jail or worse.

Harriet Klausner

SUMMARY: The second in Andrews's forensic geneticist Alexandra Blake novels finds the protagonist trying to discern the identities of several Vietnamese skulls in preparation for returning them to their home country in a political ceremony. A letter secreted in one of the skulls leads Alex to investigate further the circumstances of the deaths of the victims and, in the process, she discovers more about her father, who perished in the Vietnam War and uncovers an international plot with global ramifications.

WHAT YOU'LL LIKE: Andrews obviously knows the science and manages to incorporate it well into the plot without rendering it off-putting. The action sequences are able and occur at breakneck speed. Alex is a fun and likable heroine and a few of the secondary characters are intriguing and well-developed.

WHAT YOU WON'T: The plot is a mishmash of red herrings, some of which are interesting but discarded and others which are later resolved but serve no real purpose. The meat of the story resolves itself in a frankly ridiculous denouement which requires an incredible suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader. The villains are easily identifiable before they are revealed and are more caricatures than characters; their motives are plausible and chilling, but the action stemming from those motives is cartoonish.

BOTTOM LINE: An exciting and fascinating premise which was only marginally executed. Andrews is a talented fiction writer and the problems with this novel shouldn't discourage one from reading more of her work; the good outshines the laughable.

The newest novel featuring Dr. Alex Blake, the hot geneticist and forensic expert, is certainly fast-paced -- hurling her from autopsy to VietNam, to a befuddled personal life, to White House politics, to her own physical danger. It isn't easy to write a simple synopsis of Silent Assassin since there so many interwoven subplots. The book's treatment of Americans who served in VietNam as well as today's Vietnamese is thoughtful and sensitive (a judgment I feel comfortable making since I was drafted and served in that war). As in her previous novel (Sequence), the attention to detail is superb. The bits and pieces of trivia you pick up along the way are downright fascinating. The writing is crisp and the excitement builds to a surprising conclusion. This is fast-paced action all the way. Alex and the other on-going characters continue to evolve slowly, layer by layer showing real growth and maturity in the author's development as a fiction writer. Ms. Andrews manages to keep interest without sacrificing credibility. I was already one of her fans and now I'm even more hooked on her work.

Lori Andrews has definitely done it again with The Silent Assassin. She keeps you on the edge of your seat and you won't want to put it down till your done. She mixes just the right mixture of mystery and suspense with just the right touch of humor (where Alex lives is one example).
Once you read one of her books you will be hooked.

The story held my interest enough to read it through to the end.
I kept being distracted by the blatant grammatical errors. Several times the author used a plural verb with a singular subject. Phrases such as 'one of the men were...' bothered me. Other times it was clear she had made a change and not carried it throughout the sentence.

So much happened in this book to so many characters it was hard to keep straight. One thing amazing is how easy it has become to extract DNA from anything and everything and match it up in about 30 minutes according to this story. Has it become that easy? No crime should go unsolved in that case. This whole story was just too much to swallow.

i have read every single one. andrews never disappoints. i love her books... encyclopedic knowledge, and great stories.

The book jacket suggested real possibility. However, this book was one of the worst I have read in my long life. Ms Alexander was wrong as frequently as she was right in trying to represent the inner workings of government, commerce, and certainly, the entire US-Vietnam history and emotions. She was factually so wrong, and her contrived pot took wild swings or leaps from event to poorly introduced conclusions. I'd hate to think that her readers will let any of this cling to them in any way in terms of actual operations or government activities. "Incredulous" was the word that I came to use as a summary of the entire book.
Her personalities, especially the heroic Doctor, had a lot of potential. And then Lori Andrews turned them into caricatures instead of characters. I know she must have proven skills as a writer as her subject-verb-objects were all placed nicely and she does have a contract from a publisher. But this book is not a piece of craft that she, or her editors, should be proud of. And the recording was worse, with mispronounced ethnic names. Terrible quality.

very likeable heroine, interesting secondary characters, but the plot is just too ridiculous to be believable. Sorry. One plot line was tied up on the last page in a completely unrealistic fashion, after having been abandoned for a hundred pages. The author definitely knows about genetics and the medical sequences are ok.