Series: New Orleans #4
Every Serial Killer…
A serial killer is stalking the streets of New Orleans. The victims are killed in a ritual fashion, a series of numbers tattooed into their bodies. There are no clues, no connections except one: a crumbling old asylum that was once the scene of unspeakable madness–and is now the calling card of a new kind of fear.
Is Searching For…
Eve Renner knows Our Lady of Virtues Hospital well. As the daughter of one of its doctors, she spent her childhood exploring its secrets chambers, hidden rooms, and forbidden passageways. Now, somewhere in the decaying asylum lies the key to a betrayal from the past whose echoes are being felt with a vengeance–a crime beyond imagining that seems to lead to Eve herself.
The Perfect Victim…
As each new body is found and forgotten, memories surface, and Eve must race to put together a deadly puzzle, one terrifying piece at a time. A killer is watching, planning, luring her back to the ruins of Our Lady and the shocking truths hidden there. For the sins of the past must be revealed, and the price paid–in blood…
4 Drink Me Potions
This was my first Lisa Jackson mystery (I know, why pop into the 4th book of a series? I don’t have an answer for you), and I was fascinated with the killer. Not in some creepy obsessive way. The killer was obviously deranged in more ways than one with a God complex. For some reasons, those kinds of killers always seemed so much scarier, maybe ’cause it’s not implausible that someone in real life could think like that.
Anyway, the premise of the killings and the romance itself were intriguing. Tattooed numbers on the victims with seemingly random numbers. A very scary setting at an abandoned insane asylum complete with all those old inhumane machines they used to use, like electroshock therapy. The protagonist Eve had even initially thought she saw her ex-fiance Cole point a gun at her and shoot her. So the romance already is at odds. But somehow, everything wound itself together in all the right ways.
Amidst what I thought were the two main characters, there’s also Detectives Montoya and Bentz, who are apparently very central to this series (like I said, I came in late). Laughingly, I even suspected one of these detectives planting evidence on Cole before I figured out they were protagonists too.
This was a good mystery that kept me on my toes as every time I thought I had a culprit in mind, some other weird clue or discovery made me second guess myself. As it turns out, it wasn’t as simple or predictable as I thought the answer would be. The whole mystery made sense, which is no small feat when writing a plausible motive behind such atrocious acts, and the weird clues and tattoos were resolved in a way that made me go “ohhhh, why didn’t I think of that?”. I believe Lisa Jackson has just made a fan of me.
There were a few things that I didn’t love as much, such as the explicit nature of the killer. Whenever we see their POV, it’s like they’re always lusting after Eve. Ridiculously lusting after her. Is there ever a time when he wasn’t? I’m not sure if all of that was necessary, but oh well. Additionally, the romance just felt lacking in some ways. The way Eve started trusting Cole again, even though I always knew he was being wrongly accused, just didn’t feel quite enough. It’s a huge toll on a relationship to accuse the other capable of murder. Other than these few tidbits that just bothered me, Absolute Fear was a good introduction to Jackson’s mysteries. I look forward to reading some more by her in the future.
Down the Rabbit Hole 