Jenn's Review: On The Hunt

Author: Iris Johansen
Series: Kira Drake #1
Publication Date:  August 1, 2020
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Pages: 364
Obtained: owned
Genre:  Thriller
Rating: 2/5
Bottom Line: Not need to search this one out
Grab, Just get it at the library, or Remove from your TBR list? Remove

Summary: Kira Drake has come to Paris with her highly trained Golden Retriever, Mack, to investigate the horrific bombing of a museum in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.  What she doesn’t know is that one powerful man has a special reason to find the person responsible.  

Jack Harlan has all the money in the world, but it can’t bring his brother back. His sibling was murdered during the theft of a scientific discovery that could have made the world a better place. Now, after a four-year search, Harlan learns that this bombing was the work of the same twisted man. ~amazon.com

Review: I’ve adored many other Iris Johansen books and I so wanted to love this one, but I just didn’t. The novel drops the reader right into the story with absolutely no plot exposition. I knew the characters of Sarah and John Logan from her Eve Duncan series which gave me a little context… but not enough. While we are given more background on the characters as the story progressed, it felt like they were never really fleshed out; I was never fully invested in any of them. 

The main character of Kira seemed to be neurodivergent so her interactions were awkward but they became even stranger when paired with Harlan whose character was almost cartoonish. And although I found the plot interesting, the two dimensional characters made it seem like a rough draft of an excellent Iris Johansen novel.

The true test is whether or not I would continue this series: maybe, but based more on Ms Johansen reputation for writing exceptional novels, in hopes that this series improves.

Julie's Review: Eight Days to Live

Summary: Number-one New York Times bestselling author Iris Johansen delivers a thriller that will chill you to the core: Eve Duncan’s adopted daughter Jane has been targeted by a mysterious cult who has decided that she has only eight days to live. Eve Duncan and her adopted daughter, Jane Macguire, are pitted against the members of a secretive cult who have targeted Jane and have decided that she will be their ultimate sacrifice. In eight days they will come for her. In eight days, what Jane fears the most will become a reality. In eight days, she will die. It all begins with a painting that Jane, an artist, displays in her Parisian gallery. The painting is called “Guilt” and Jane has no idea how or why she painted the portrait of the chilling face. But the members of a cult that dates back to the time of Christ believe that Jane’s blasphemy means she must die. But first, she will lead them to an ancient treasure whose value is beyond price. This elusive treasure, and Jane’s death, are all that they need for their power to come to ultimate fruition. With Eve’s help, can Jane escape before the clock stops ticking? ~amazon.com

Review: I love the Iris Johansen books but to be a bit honest, I'm tiring of the whole "will Eve find Bonnie's killer or not?" themes in the books. So, when I realized that Eight Days to Live centered around her adopted daughter, Jane, I was thrilled. Not only that but we get to meet up with some great characters from Jane's recent past: John MacDuff, Jock Gavin and Seth Caleb. All who in their own way care for Jane and Eve. Let me tell you that Seth Caleb can enter my head any time he wants. Holy Smokes, that guys breathes sexual tension.

Again, Jane is the target of some crazed, fanatical group. This time they are a religious cult that centers around Judas Iscariot, you know the guy who was the traitor to Jesus. She's on their radar because one of her paintings is the spitting image of Judas and therefore she must be a blasphemer because that image is sacred. She's being hunted by a man called Millet and the one truly holding the strings, Roland. Both these men are psychotic, in different ways but no less dangerous. Jane, being Jane, throws herself right into the middle of the fray and uses herself and those around her to draw out these crazed men. Luckily for her, the people around her are lethal in their own ways.

Now, it's not that I think something will happen to Jane, Eve or Joe because I do know the series goes on, but it's always a roller coaster ride with them. They always draw the most interesting people to them and then they are bound to them for life. I always like to see who they pick up on their latest adventure.

Since it's the 10th book in the Eve Duncan series, I don't think you have to start at the very beginning, I didn't but I do think you need to go back to when Jane started to be a main character to understand the ties that bind her to Joe and Eve.

I've definitely been away from this series too long so I'll make it a priority to return to it soon. Perhaps this summer. Next up would be Eve, Quinn and finally Bonnie (Eve Duncan).

Final Take: 4/5


 

And the Winner Is...

Congratulations to Margaret for winning our Iris Johansen prize pack!  Please email your information to Jenn so that she can send your books out to you as soon as possible.

As always, Girls Just Reading uses Random.org to select our winners. Thanks to everyone who participated.

 

Giveaway: A Smattering of Iris Johansen

This is a bit of an odd collection of Iris Johansen's work, but Julie and I wanted to make sure we introduced her work to our readers.  Actually, one lucky reader will win three Iris Johansen novels:

1. Deadlock - (new hardcover)  Emily Hudson is an archeologist who travels the world in search of priceless artifacts from war-torn countries and other hot spots. Her best friend and partner, Joel Levy, is always at her side—until one day, her entire crew is massacred and Joel and Emily are held captive. Victims of one of the most ruthless and evil human beings on earth. For two weeks they try to survive, until Emily is the unwitting instrument in Joel’s demise. John Garrett has worked for the CIA, MI6, and whoever else needed his services. Now, the CIA comes calling with a desperate mission for him: save Emily Hudson. But their may be more to this job than they let him know. And soon, his connection to Emily has him questioning everything he thought to be true. Emily has vengeance on her mind. Will Garrett aid her in getting revenge? Can Emily help him get to the truth behind a bigger conspiracy? Or will they both die trying… 
2. Quicksand - (library bound hardcover)  Returning from Johansen’s New York Times bestselling thriller, Stalemate, forensic sculptor Eve Duncan is still reeling from the disappearance of her daughter, Bonnie. Deciding to take matters into her own hands, she enlists the clairvoyant skills of Dr. Megan Blair to help find her. No strangers to looking for clues where there seem to be none, the two women use their highly specialized talents to hunt down Bonnie’s elusive kidnapper and return her to her mother’s arms. But is Bonnie still alive? Will the two women find her in time? 
3. Chasing the Night - (ARC paperback)  Reviewed yesterday

This giveaway is open to residents of US or Canada only. Fill out the form below by midnight EST, on Wednesday July 13th, 2011 to enter.

Good Luck!

As always, Girls Just Reading uses Random.org to select our winners.

Group Review: Chasing The Night

Summary: CIA agent’s two-year-old child was stolen in the night as a brutal act of vengeance. Now, eight years later, this torment is something Catherine Ling awakens to every day. Her friends, family, and colleagues tell her to let go, move on, accept that her son is never coming back. But she can’t. Catherine needs to find someone as driven and obsessed as she is to help her— and that person is Eve Duncan. She knows that Eve shares her nightmare, since closure is also something that eludes Eve after the disappearance of her daughter Bonnie. Now, Eve must take her talents as a forensic sculptor to another level, using age progression as a way to unite Catherine with her child. As Eve gets drawn deeper into Catherine’s horror, she must face looming demons of her own.

Bonnie’s killer is still out there. And a new killer is taunting Eve and Catherine at every turn. Is Catherine’s son alive, or not? These two women endure the worst fear any mother can imagine in Iris Johansen’s latest thrill ride, a gut-wrenching journey into the darkest places of the soul. ~Product Description

Jenn's Review:  I've missed a few books in this series, but seeing as I've read Iris Johansen's books out of order before, I thought it would be alright.  I actually had to take a break from this series, because, though I truly enjoy it, I was getting frustrated with where it was going... or not going.  That, and the older I get, or perhaps the longer I'm a mother, the more trouble I have reading about the abduction or death of children.

Don't get me wrong.  I love this series.  Iris Johansen is one of my favorite authors.  I own all the books in the series in hard cover including those between where I left off and Chasing the Night  -and beyond (Eve came out in April).  She weaves a magnificent tale.  I just needed a breather.

That being said, it was good to be back with Eve Duncan and Joe Quinn.  I've missed them.  This book didn't dwell much on their relationship, but they're obviously in a good place again and I like that.  It's always Johansen's characters that get me.  She writes strong women, women who have been shaken to their core but who survive and endure.  They draw the reader in and are impossible to forget.  Catherine Ling is no exception.  Like all of Johansen's female characters, she's admirable, but not enviable.  Her story is unimaginably heartbreaking and terrifyingly believable.

Though the plot seems a little unrealistic, it is easy to forgive because it's good.  As usual, Eve gets pulled farther into a desperate situation than she should but it's easy to see how she could with a missing child on the line. Of course, this pulls Joe with her.

There is something about the flow of Ms. Johansen's writing that is engaging.  Point of view switches are tough, especially in thrillers, but the best authors always make the transition seamless, and she certainly does.  It also amazes me that, after all this time, Iris Johansen can still surprise me, as there was a twist I didn't see coming.

You know you've found a good writer, when you get so involved with the characters that their decisions upset you to the point of putting a series down for a while.  Perhaps now that I know where things are headed, it will be easier for me to visit where they've been. I highly recommend Iris Johansen's work (start with Face of Deception), just don't be surprised when you get emotionally attached to the characters.  She has a way of sucking you in.

Final Take:  4.0/5


Julie's Review: I was about to give up on Iris Johansen's Eve Duncan series after reading Blood Game but after finishing Chasing the Night, I'm ready to see it through to the end. I also feel that based on some upcoming releases this series is coming to an end. I'm actually ok with that based on what Ms. Johansen has done in this book.

Chasing the Night is the best Eve Duncan book in a very long time. It returns to what Eve does best: forensic sculpting. Well ok, this time she uses computer age progression but I felt that it was getting back to the roots of the series; Eve helping others.

We are introduced to CIA Agent Catherine Ling quickly in the beginning of the book and you can't help but admire her. She's tough, resilient and pretty much a kick ass kind of women. She enters Eve's life with a vengeance and never leaves. She is on a mission to rescue her son from the vicious Radovac who kidnapped him 9 years prior.

What I really enjoyed about this book was the other cast of characters that we were introduced to: Kelly, Kelsov and Natalie. I especially liked Kelsov even though you knew he was vicious in his own right. Ms. Johansen was successful in bringing the current fears of terrorist attacks into the plot. She did it in a manner that it didn't take away from the major plot of the book which was finding Catherine's son Luke.

I was also extremely thankful that she did not decide to mess with Joe and Eve again in this book. I've had enough of that in her more recent books. I don't mind tension but I don't like the feeling that they are going to split up.

Chasing the Night never lets up on the action and comes to a rousing conclusion. I enjoyed Eve and Quinn working with the CIA and Venable again. I liked that the novel was cemented in reality and not in the paranormal or vampire world.

If you haven't read an Eve Duncan book you could start with Chasing the Night and not feel completely lost. With the introduction of Catherine Ling it has become a whole new series.

I still have to go back and read Eight Days to Live which features Jane McGuire but I'm looking forward to reading Eve, Quinn and Bonnie.

Julie's Final Take: 4.5/5

Julie's Review: Blood Game

Summary: Bestseller Johansen's latest Eve Duncan forensics thriller features an all-too-mortal vampire. Fresh off a multiple child homicide case (Quicksand), Eve discovers a blood-stained goblet in her refrigerator. The goblet closely resembles one found with the bloodless body of Nancy Jo Norris, a U.S. senator's 19-year-old daughter, the victim of a wannabe Dracula who ultimately thirsts for Eve. In a paranormal twist, Joe Quinn, Eve's FBI love interest, appears to have contracted psychic powers from Megan Blair, introduced in Pandora's Daughter, and can now see dead people—Nancy Jo and Eve's daughter, Bonnie, to be exact. The ghosts guide the search for the serial sucker, complete with corny gothic monologues. Johansen risks alienating some readers as the series slips deeper into the supernatural, but diehards will be pleased Eve at last finds some peace in her ever-growing bond with Joe.~amazon.com

Review: Anyone who reads this blog with regularity knows that I am not caught up in the latest Vampire or Paranormal craze, so you can imagine my dismay when one of my favorite authors has decided to take a foray into these genres...together. I love Eve Duncan, Joe and Jane so I was excited to get to this book until I read the book flap. I tried to keep an open mind during the book but yeah I just couldn't. WARNING: Review might contain spoilers for those who are not as far in the series.

Blood Game brings us back to Eve after Quicksand asthe continuous search for her daughter Bonnie, who went missing many years before. Eve is continually on the hunt for the person who abducted and presumably murdered her daughter. Eve is at her best when she is working on her forensic sculpting to help bring home lost souls who need identifying when no other way can be used.

Unfortunately in Blood Game, we are moved away from this core. We are introduced to a murderer who thinks he's on the path to enlightenment by drinking the blood of women. Yup, he thinks he's a vampire. We are also introduced to Seth Caleb, who has made it his life mission to track Jelak. So we have a vampire and a vampire hunter. (This is just soo not my thing). Of course, Jelak thinks that Eve is the ultimate sacrifice and her blood will give him the power he hungers for.

Things are also not going well for Joe and Eve at the start of this book. Joe is on edge and has growing concerns about his sanity. After the last book he now has the ability to see dead people. This of course helps and hampers him during this investigation. The job has always been personal for Joe but to see the victims adds a whole different level to the job.

With each new Eve Duncan book, she introduces us to a new character and that character ends up sticking around. Not necessarily a bad thing for a series that has had the same set of characters for a while.

All in all, I'm not sure if this new direction is a blip in the series or if it's a permanent change. I'm not ready to give up on this series or Iris Johansen yet, but if she keeps on this path I will hang up the series.

Final Take: 3/5

Julie's Review: Quicksand

Summary: The action-packed 12th installment in bestseller Johansen's saga featuring forensic sculptor Eve Duncan (after Stalemate) is also a sequel of sorts to Pandora's Daughter, which chronicled the life of Megan Blair, an Atlanta physician with burgeoning psychic abilities. Intertwining the two disparate story lines intensifies both, as Johansen pits her two courageous female protagonists against a vicious serial killer who claims to have murdered Eve's seven-year-old daughter, Bonnie, years earlier. When Eve's love interest, Atlanta police lieutenant Joe Quinn, tracks down elusive child predator Henry Kistle to a small town in Illinois, Quinn alerts the local authorities and sets off a series of bloody events that lead Eve and Megan Blair to a remote area in the Okefenokee swamp where they'll either discover the whereabouts of Bonnie's body—or come face-to-face with a psychopath bent on killing and burying them all in unmarked graves. The adrenaline-fueled narrative will keep Johansen fans eagerly turning the pages. ~amazon.com

Review: I truly enjoy the Eve Duncan series and Quicksand (Eve Duncan Forensics Thrillers) is definitely not a let down. It starts off quick and never stops. In Quicksand, we are again on the hunt for the killer of Eve's daughter, Bonnie. This time it leads us to Henry Kistle and Eve playing a dangerous cat and mouse game. I had a VERY hard time reading this book at first because of the subject matter...a serial killer who "specializes" in children. I couldn't read it before bed because it gave me nightmares. I made my way through it because I knew that justice would be served in the end.

Quicksand brings back some of my more recent favorite characters from Ms. Johansen's books Stalemate and Pandora's Daughter Megan and Philip Blair, Montalvo and Miguel. I love how she weaved all these characters into one book. Of course Joe and Jane were still in the story. For Eve and Joe, their relationship is at a crossroads. You can tell that decisions will need to be made but those are for another book.

Eve made me mad at times during the book because I think when it comes to the search for Bonnie's remains she can be a bit obsessive but as a mother I empathized with her as well. I can also see where Jane and Joe come from regarding their feelings about the continuous search. I do like the books a bit more when they deal with cases other than trying to find Bonnie because at some point they are going to have to find resolve that plot line and move forward.

There is pretty good twist at the end of the book that I sensed was going to happen but was happy it did. I think it sets up a new direction for the series.

If you like fast paced, intense thrillers than Quicksand is for you. I do think you would have a better understanding of the characters if you read Stalemate and Pandora's Daughter first but it's not completely necessary.

Final Take: 4/5

Julie's Review: Pandora's Daughter

Summary: Orphaned at 15 and raised by her Uncle Phillip, the adult Megan Blair is an Atlanta pediatrician who hears terrified voices. Revelation comes when childhood friend Neal Grady, who is now a shadowy government agent, arrives to apprise Megan of her psychic powers. And to warn her: Molino-the relentless villain who killed Megan's mother, believing her touch killed his son-is targeting Megan next. Molino thinks Megan was born to an ancient Sephardic family of psychics, and plans to force her to reveal the location of the Ledger, a book that contains the family's secrets and finances. He then plans to kill her, if Megan, Neal and Neal's sidekick, Jed Hartley, don't find him first. Johansen increases the tension by alternating point of view, but two-dimensional characters, repetitious explanations and stilted dialogue make staying tuned difficult. ~amazon.com/publisher's weekly

Review: Pandora's Daughter definitely isn't Ms. Johansen's best novel to date. It's a little slow and while I found all the characters interesting, I actually found that the sex in the book detracted from the other plots. I'm not saying she didn't write the sex scenes well, I'm just saying you pretty much knew they were coming and who it was going to happen between. Not necessarily bad, but predictable. Megan Blair is a 20 something, bleeding heart doctor who it seems has psychic abilities that she does not know about. Neal Grady is a man who was with her when her mother was murdered and also has psychic abilities and for the past 10 years he's been controlling her mind so that she doesn't hear the voices in her head and remember what happened to her mom. Well conveniently Grady needs Megan for something so he lifts his control on her brain to flood her with said voices. We meet a variety of characters who are good and of course the standard evil, demonic villain who was very one-sided. I like my villains 3 dimensional or at least a bit more complicated than Molino.

I found the premise of the book, psychic abilities, to be interesting and thought they could have done a lot more with it than she did but this is probably an introduction to a series where Grady and Megan will be showcased. I'd probably read another book with them as the protagonists but the plot would need to be tighter. I would enjoy getting to know more about the history of the Devanez family in future books.

Final Take: 3/5

Julie's Review: Stalemate

Summary: In the latest Eve Duncan forensics thriller from bestseller Johansen (Killer Dreams), the Atlanta-based forensic sculptor with an international reputation finds herself attracted, not always convincingly, to a sleazy manipulator. Duncan, who specializes in reconstructing facial features from skulls, has buried herself in her work since the disappearance and presumed death of her seven-year-old daughter, Bonnie, years earlier. That still-open wound is probed with sadistic skill by Luis Montalvo, a shady Colombian arms dealer, who offers to solve the mystery of what happened to Bonnie if Duncan agrees to attempt a reconstruction from a skull Montalvo believes was his late wife's. Despite the misgivings of her former husband, an FBI agent, Duncan accepts, and soon finds herself dodging bullets in a war between Montalvo and a drug lord rival in the Colombian jungle. Despite a shortage of the sort of meaty science that, say, a Kathy Reichs thriller typically provides, Johansen's faithful audience should be satisfied. ~amazon.com

Review: I've lost track of the number of Iris Johansen books I've read let alone the Eve Duncan series. I do know that I haven't read all of them and will probably go back to the beginning at some point. Stalemate is another excellent installment in the Eve Duncan series and it doesn't disappoint. Montalvo is an intriguing character not only for Eve but for us readers. I liked the idea of Eve going out on her own, against Joe in this book. She's relied on Joe for a long time and to see her trust in herself was nice. There are a whole host of interesting characters in the story from the CIA agent to the Colombian rebels. The descriptions of the Colombian jungle are vivid and brought it to life for me. Since on of the major themes in this book wasn't resolved I have a feeling we will be seeing most of these characters again. The only character that I missed was Jane McGuire since the last 2 Iris Johansen books I read were centered around her (Blind Alley and Countdown).

You don't have to have read any of the other books in the series to follow this one, so if the summary intrigues you, give it ago, you won't be disappointed.

Final Take: 3.75/5