Perhaps I confused these novels at the library’s with Patricia Cornwell’s books about that other female forensic specialist, but after dutifully slogging through these to the finish line, I have to say I should have stuck with Cornwell. Johansen’s books start off with a decent premise and then go rapidly downhill from there. I thought I was reading about the hunt for a psycho kidnapper out for vengeance over the execution of his child-rapist and murderer son, and instead I got a bunch of cheap tricks, bad dialogue and even worse plot. Put together a precocious 7-year-old ghost, a talking skull, a vampire descendant, an animal whisperer, a handful of hunky sexy and deadly men, and a handful of hunky sexy and deadly women, and you have the Eve Duncan saga, for better or—decidedly—for worse…
After the kidnapping and murder of her little girl Bonnie years earlier, single mom Eve Duncan turned her artistic talents to forensic anthropology, that is, taking the skulls of unidentified victims and reconstructing their faces in an effort to identify them and (hopefully) give their families closure. Eve gets captured by Jim Doane, the father of Kevin, a hypnotic child rapist and killer who also happened to be a terrorist with close ties to al-Qaeda (of course). The man who killed Kevin is an assassin named Lee Zander who was hired for the hit by a U.S. general whose daughter was one of Kevin’s victims. Zander, it turns out, is also Eve Duncan’s father. So when Doane goes for revenge, he captures Eve not only to reconstruct (and, he believes, resurrect) the malevolent Kevin, but to use her to lure her father Zander into a death trap.
When Hunting Eve begins, Eve has managed to temporarily escape Doane’s clutches, but she is quickly lost in the Colorado wilderness with expert hunter Doane on her trail and Kevin’s evil whispering in her head. Meanwhile, a collection of Eve’s friends, including her adopted daughter, her current and former lovers, and a host of lawmen and other characters, gather to find Eve and bring her home, while Zander—fully aware of Doane’s gameplan—has to decide whether the soul he buried decades earlier when he became a paid assassin still exists, or whether he should just walk away. The rest of the novel follows the apparently fearless Eve, who is all biting sarcasm and taunts, and the various jealousies, outbursts of lust, macho pushing and shoving, girl-bonding and petty gripes that seem to dominate her rescue party. Out of respect for a no-spoilers policy, I will simply say that the book ends on a cliff-hanger, which is readily resolved…
In Silencing Eve, the last book in this interminable series. More lust, more petty jostling for dominance, more outbursts of jealousy, more girl-bonding, some spectacularly absurd moments of talking with the animals, and Eve’s continued reconstruction of
Kevin’s apparently indestructible skull while Zander continues to wrestle with his paternal conscience, or lack thereof.
The only added wrinkle to Silencing Eve is an al-Qaeda plot to destroy Chicago and Seattle with thermonuclear weapons, which the dead Kevin’s father and newly-surfaced mother–who is way creepier than the father—are heavily involved in. I don’t want to give you any spoilers, but let’s just say the white hats win the day and the black hats get their due. Whew, I was really worried about that.
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