Customer Reviews

Silent Killer

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Eighteen months ago, something terrible happened in the town of Dunmore. Catherine Cantrell and her pastor husband Mark were relaxing at home, when the doorbell rings. Mark heads to the door to answer it. Suddenly Cathy hears Mark screaming bloody murder. When Cathy arrives at the door, she finds Mark in the front yard engulfed in flames from head to toe.

Cathy has returned to Dunmore. she wants to put the past behind her and get on with her life with her son, Sean. There are two reasons why Cathy shouldn't have returned...one is named Jackson Perdue and the other is that there is a serial killer on the loose.

Jackson has also returned home to Dunmore. He has been offered a job working for the police department. His first case is stopping a serial killer. One that newspaper reporters have dubbed "Fire and Brimstone Killer", because the killer has taken it upon themselves to dish out God's punishment on clergymen who are anything but innocent.

It has been a little while since I have read a Beverly Barton novel. After reading her latest release Silent Killer, I am a 100% convinced that Mrs. Barton can not write a bad book. What I liked about this book is that even though there was clues given bit by bit of the identity of the killer, I still was comeplety surprised when the killer's identity was finally revealed. I love when this happens. This is hard to do as I am a big thriller fan.

There were some loose ends that involved some of the characters in the story. Luckily Mrs. Barton explained that this is because she has already been working on a new novel that will tie up all these loose ends. I can't wait. The killer may be silent but you don't have to by picking up a copy of this book to read for yourself.

I love the Powell Agency series and specifically the relationship between Griffin Powell and Nicole Baxter in the The Murder Game! The two have a few scenes in Silent Killer, but the book itself was a bit of a disappointment.

The story revolves around a mystery that has someone killing ministers by setting them afire. Cathy Cantrell is the wife of one of the first victims. After her husband Mark dies, Cathy ends up in a mental institution and her fifteen year old son goes to live with her in-laws. Now out and much stronger than she was before, Cathy comes home to claim her life and to get her son back from her husband's parents. Jackson Perdue is now a deputy sheriff is assigned the cold cases and together Cathy and Jack are thrown into a religious maelstrom of vengeance and religious fervor to find Mark's killer.

This book was too religious for me. Barton generally delivers a good mystery and this one fell flat. I guess the killer almost immediately and then had to endure the religious dogma to get to the end. There were a few loose ends also. For instance Cathy's husband Mark was killed because the killer saw him with another woman. Another minister is murdered because the killer believes he is a pedophile. Yet it is unclear whether either of these "reasons" were true.

This is definitely not one of Barton's best!

Eighteen months ago, Catherine Cantrell observed in horror her well respected spouse Mark die in an inferno on their front porch. Horrified by the arson that killed her spouse, Cathy fled to Birmingham leaving their teenage son Seth with in-laws. Now with the help of her BFF Lorie Hammonds, she returns to her hometown of Dunmore, Alabama to raise Seth; though she knows she will never forget what she saw or heard. The case remains unsolved.

However, more clergy are murdered in Dunmore that local police detective Jackson Perdue assumes is tied somehow to Cathy. As his former lover back in high school and knowing he still loves her, he rejects the circumstantial evidence that Catherine is the avenging serial killer as the Cantrell family implies.

This is an exciting action packed romantic suspense that is at its best when Catherine and Jackson share the stage with no one except a corpse even though the underlying premise focuses on the families of religious leaders who try to keep secrets from being revealed. The subplot of Jack and Cathy rekindling their love is done well as he struggles with his heart saying she is innocent, but his upper head and the townsfolk think otherwise. SILENT KILLER is a strong tale that contains too many subplots and townsfolk detracting from the super main theme of an enjoyable regional police procedural romance.

Harriet Klausner

Losing her preacher husband to a violent fiery death was difficult enough; when another pastor is murdered in the same fashion, it sends Cathy Cantrell over the edge. After spending a year in a clinic recovering from a nervous breakdown, she's ready to regain custody of her teenage son Sean, but her in-laws are reluctant to let her spend time alone with him, let alone give up custody. Also returning to town is the guy she had a brief passionate affair with when she was a teen. Jackson Perdue has just taken a job as a deputy after his career in the military is cut short due to an injury. When they meet again, the same feelings are there, but both are reluctant to pick up where they left off. As Jackson is selected to investigate cold cases, he comes across the murder of Mark Cantrell and soon a third victim is killed and it's finally determined that a serial killer has targeted clergymen throughout the south. As the body count escalates, Jackson is fearful of the effect it will have on Cathy, as the two tentatively start to explore their feelings, much to her son's dismay.

Barton can always be counted on to craft a well written and suspenseful story laced with plenty of passion. She creates some really horrible monsters in her villains, and intersperses characters from previous novels into her storylines (usually with success). Her ability with a red herring is unsurpassed, as I continually second guess whodunit and usually come up wrong. There are a few loose ends that I would have liked to have had explained - such as Mark being the first victim because he was unfaithful, then I realized that the killer often misinterpreted the actions of the clergy before killing them.

I thought that there were too many sub-plots that ended up not being explored. Obviously there will be a related story featuring her best friend Lorie - the good girl who left Dunmore for Hollywood to become an actress, only to end up in porn and Mike, the widowed town sheriff who cannot forgive her - I can't wait to read that story. But I found the sub-plot involving Griff and Nicole (and Yvette) and the other with Jackson's sister and former lover just a bit of overkill, and ultimately, just not intriguing enough to sustain my interest. Neither added anything to the primary story's focus, and after awhile, I just skipped them. At some point more just is ... more.

I believe this book should have been called the "Best of Barton". This was the best book IMO she has done so far. Of course, I loved it being set in Alabama, as that is where I am from. It is a great "whodunit". This one will keep your interest, you will not want to be interrupted after you start it and you will not want it to end. We do know now that Ms. Barton is already writing another novel due in 2010 to tie up the few loose ends left in Silent Killer. I wish all of "my authors" that I read were as good as Ms. Barton. She has set the bar so high now that the other authors in this genre will have to race to catch up with her.

I highly recommend this book to romantic suspense fans as well as thriller and mystery fans. This book is not to be missed.

I spent my hard earned money on this book being led to believe it was a mystery/thriller. It turns out to be a romantic novel/very slight thriller. I do not read romantic novels by choice and do not want to be tricked into buying them. Fabio should be on the cover. I do not need or want damsels in distress who are still passed off as strong women, "heaving breasts" and "throbbing members" in my mysteries. Will they or won't they rekindle their romance? Of course they will and who cares? Then there is the incest angle that runs throughout. A good mystery doesn't need this. I would not have chosen this book under any circumstances if it had been marketed the right way. Half way through I could not have cared less about whodunit and I was very reluctant to even continue. There are far too many writers who are passing themselves off as mystery writers these days. Tess Gerritsen who praised this book is one of them. Please put the books in the correct subject category. I can't read a third of the book before I buy it and I'm tired of wasting my money. The most I can hope for now is to trade it to the used book store. I certainly would not pass it on to any of my friends who enjoy a good book. A romance novel by any other name is still a romance novel. It also makes for one lame mystery.

As I'm finding to be typical with this author, there were far too many characters to keep them all straight and the main ones were completely unlikable and there was no reason to care about them since neither were developed very well. I also thought the romance moved way too fast. Add that to all the religious stuff and this book was just not worth the time.

to waste time reading this book. It was as if someone else wrote this under the name of Beverly Barton. What a hodge-podge of characters! Sorry, Bev, you struck out big time on this book. Won't even give details --its another waste of time!

Good story and fun to read. I couldn't put it down since it was such a good mystery. I recommend it to anyone who loves a good mystery.

Up until this book, I have really enjoyed most of Ms. Barton's books, but I was highly disappointed in this one, and when I came to one rape scene in particular, I literally wanted to throw the book across the room. It was disturbing and graphic, and at the same time, I felt that it served no particular purpose in the storyline except for shock value. It could have been glossed over or implied instead of told the way that it was (without going into too much detail). It was also hard for me to establish a connection with the characters, they seemed kinda of flat, one-dimensional. Now having said all that, another reason why I am done with her books, besides being hugely disappointed in this one, is that I went to an author's conference recently and met Ms. Barton, who seemed very friendly on the surface. She was like, "take a pic of us together and send it to my email and I'll put it on my FB page" or something like that. So when I did, as she asked me to do, and I included that she had asked me to send her a pic, I got a very snide reply back from her camp about her not being able to reply or to do such things, yada yada yada (as if I really wanted her to or as if I was some fan fanatic who emailed authors all the time...not hardly-this was the first time). That may sound petty, but if your going to diss your fans like that for something that you asked them to do, then you're going to lose them. Like moi. So, off my rant now, there are a lot of other equally good, perhaps more thankful for their fans, romantic suspense authors out there that I shall save my hard-earned money for instead.