Rebecca Martin's Reviews > Dead Scared

Well...this will do it for me. I just can't get into this series. The writing and characterizations have not improved or deepened from the first book in the series. I have several beefs with this book beyond that. The plot is absurd. If a writer is going to give us a book with a plot this outlandish, it must have a strong foundation in terms of motivation and explanations for how things have happened. Readers are left basically clueless about why these evil people are being so evil and how they were able to cover it up (not to mention finance it) for such a long time. DC Lacey Flint certainly doesn't give us those insights. She doesn't connect what's happening to her to what is going on with, say, Evi. Again, we have a book full of such passive women except for those who are inexplicably evil. Plot points are left dangling (in the book the question is asked multiple times, how did Nick Bell get Lacey's top secret cell number? We're not told) and the book just suddenly ends. Somehow a bunch of baddies get from one place to another with Lacey in tow and we have a scene where she is very dramatically threatened (I won't say what happens to her) and then the book just ends. That's it.

Supposedly Lacey is very spunky and smart. In this novel she's a little more active than in the first (she climbs through a window) and she FINALLY puts together some clues and figures out what's been going on, but she is also punch-drunk in love and just seems to be a character who isn't growing. The climax of the series will come not when she is promoted to DI but when she and her honey FINALLY do it. It's that kind of book. If you like that, then this one's for you. No more for me though. Sorry for being so harsh, but I'm very disappointed. I did like Sniffy, the dog.