Friday, April 8, 2011

The Night Season; Chelsea Cain

 Title: The Night Season (book #4 of a series)
Author: Chelsea Cain 
Publication Year: 2011
Publisher: MacMillian Audio
Edition: audiobook
Reader: Chelsea Cain
Source: Amazon Vine
Date Completed: 4/5/2011 
Setting: Oregon
Rating: 2/5
Recommend: No
I have been of fan of Chelsea Cain's, Archie Sheridan and Gretchen Lowell novels, for the last several years. In Heartsick, Sweetheart, and Evil at Heart, the stars are, Archie Sheridan, a police detective from Portland, Oregon, and Gretchen Lowell, a serial killer who has played cat and mouse, tormenting Archie, landing him in a psych hospital briefly, hooked on painkillers, but finally as of the last novel she is behind bars.  The other two characters are Henry Sobol, Archie's partner, and Susan Ward, a newspaper columnist that Archie has the hots for. I wondered what direction her new book would take without Gretchen, the serial killer, to keep readers on the edge of their seats, and biting their fingernails as they turned each new page.  I was anxious to find out what Night Season had in store.

In this latest offering, Archie Sheridan and  fellow partner Henry Sobol have their work cut out for them. Susan Ward is another returning character, who, in this novel is covering a story about a flooding which had wiped out a town many years earlier.

The story opens with a horrific flood in 1948 that wiped out the entire town of Vanport. Some 15 people who lived in a public housing project at that time, lost their lives.  The story then flashes to the present time when once again heavy rains, and flooding are occurring in the Portland area. A skeleton surfaces around a dog park, with origins from as far back as the flood of 1948. Before long a woman who was reported missing turns up dead, and two more people who were thought to have died from drowning, turn out to have strange bite marks on their bodies, and tests show they have been poisoned.

Without saying much more about the serial killer, the source of the poisonous toxin, or how the story ended, I'll just say that I was extremely disappointed in this thriller.  It was not a nail biter like Cain's previous three novels, and quite frankly, once the mystery began to unravel, I thought the whole story was far fetched and just plain crazy. The audio book was read by the author and the reading was well done, however the story itself left me disappointed. For me, I think it is probably time to try a new thriller series. 

15 comments:

  1. Sorry this didn't keep you on the edge of your seat.

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  2. Sorry this one didn't come through for you, Diane.

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  3. That's too bad. I've read mixed reviews. I 've only read the first book and really thought it was different. I just haven't had time to move on to the others yet.

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  4. I am sorry to hear that the book wasn't "thrilling" enough. I hate when you expect so much from a book which eventually turns out to be disappointing.

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  5. It's an extra disappointment when it is part of a series that you like. I'm reading Split Second by Alex Kava - so far it is an excellent thriller. Very, very creepy serial killer and female FBI profiler determined to catch him.

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  6. I got confused from the beginning. Sounds like this one "jumped the shark."

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  7. That's too bad, night time things should be interesting!!!

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  8. Maybe I'll stop after the 3rd one??? I still have 2 and 3 to get to anyway! Thanks for the honest review of this one!

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  9. Oh no. It's awful when a favorite disappoints. :-(

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  10. Oh...that is too bad. I read the first one in the series. Maybe I'll stop at book three.

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  11. I loved the precious books in the series and am sorry to hear what you thought of this one.
    But I am not totally surprised, because I did not think the last one was nearly as good as the first two.

    Think I will hold off on this one for awhile...maybe a long while.

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  12. I thought the use of the rain and the flashbacks were great but the "mystery" aspect I didn't like. Farfetched is exactly right! I am willing to suspend disbelief a lot but I don't know this I just couldn't buy.

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  13. Thanks for stopping by my blog.

    Have been a follower...I want to subscribe by email...can't find the link...I will keep looking.

    THANKS.

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  14. I'm sorry this one didn't work for you. I liked it, but it was quite a departure for the series. It was more of a conventional mystery, but I really enjoyed the richness of Portland's history.

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  15. Now see, I really liked this one, although the method of murder was more than a bit odd. But I loved the setting and mood and really got attached to Archie. I'm going to have to go back and read the previous books.

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