Death Still

By: John C. Dalglish

Narrated by: James Killavey

Length: 2 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

Detectives Strong and Layne are tracking a killer who's adept at covering his trail and making their jobs difficult.

His targets are smart women who should know better than to get trapped but who are somehow not on guard when they should be.

What's most disturbing is the killer's motive.

Jason and Vanessa are in a race to stop this guy before he creates any more "collections".

Edited by Samantha Gordon, Invisible Ink Editing.

©2012 John C. Dalglish (P)2015 John Dalglish

This was really good!

*I was given a free audiobook for an honest review.*

I hadn't heard of the author before so I was a bit weary at first, but I was delighted as I got more engrossed in the story. Solid plot. Great characters. This was my first Jason Strong and bit won't be my last. So this can be read as a standalone. It was well-written and filled with enough suspense to hold my attention. 4.5/5

Serial killers can be ever so polite.

Note: While this is Book 7 in the series, it works fine as a stand alone.

Detectives Jason Strong and Vanessa Layne are working a new case. The story starts with a woman’s body found in the basement by her husband. She is tied in a chair, both wrists slit. There are slim leads to go on. Once the ME confirms that the death was indeed murder, the detectives have a freer hand in investigating.

Jason and his wife recently had a baby girl and Jason is still adjusting to being a sleep deprived dad. Meanwhile, the whole department is still adjusting to the temporary boss as their old boss heals up from a work-related injury. Jason, and to some extent Vanessa, have more that just the murder to focus on. But once another body turns up, they tune out these other distractions and race against the clock to prevent a third murder. Jason and Vanessa have a camaraderie that comes from years of serving together. They often joke, even if it is sometimes a gallows humor.

Right away, the reader knows who the murder is. We spend perhaps half the book in the murderer’s head. The reader doesn’t have any guessing to do nor any connecting of the dots. Rather, the book is built on the suspense of watching the detectives and killer try to out fox each other. Marcus, our bad guy, is smart. He changes vehicles and identities on a regular basis. He maintains a polite demeanor at all times, which makes him seem perfectly harmless. I found his story line the most interesting because I wanted to know why he kills his victims in such a way. By the end of the story, we know what makes him tick. Indeed, I felt that I knew the killer better than I knew the detectives and I will say that this is the one weakness to reading this book as a stand alone.

The female victims have short parts in the story. They range in age and demeanor. All of them let the killer into their lives and I can totally see how that happened. They were just being human. I liked that Strong and Layne didn’t blame the victims and remained professional throughout the story. Two of the victims get short backstories of their own so that the reader feels they are people and not just stand in victim cardboard cutouts.

I received this book free of charge from the author (via the GoodReads Audiobooks Group) in exchange for an honest review.

The Narration: James Killavey was so-so for this book. He had OK male voices, but his female voices were almost non-existent, though they did get a little better as the story went on. He performed the narration in a near-sports announcer voice that made me think of the old radio dramas. If his voices had had more distinction and were more varied, then that would have worked for this book. Also, the volume sometimes varied and occasionally I heard something in the background, perhaps paper being turned over.

Good Stuff

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yup...Good detective stories without all the not so nice language.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Jason Strong.

Which character – as performed by James Killavey – was your favorite?

Once again...Jason Strong. Narrator did a good job with all the characters.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

No..but very good listen.

Good Story for a Suspense Novel, but not the best.

I think I probably would have enjoyed this one more if it didn't sound like an old time radio play from the 30's and 40's. The only thing missing was the back ground static from the radio noise.

Set in San Antonio, TX, Death Still is a police prodedural drama that takes place over the course of a few days. A madman is on the loose killing women by first making them remove their shoes then tying them to a chair before slitting both wrists with a razor blade which he leaves behind when leaving the scene of the murder.

Marcus is a deranged killer who finds his victims by cruising the Want Ads for people whose homes are for sale by owner. He takes pictures of the property before taking pictures of his victims at the moment of death.

Like most police procedurals Marcus is revealed as the killer pretty early on and the rest of the book is Detective Jason Strong and his partner Detective Vannessa Lane trying to figure out the true identity of the killer and catch him before he can kill again. To be honest there wasn't that much that was new in this story. Detectives Strong and Lane don't employ any new techniques or use any extraordinary measures to catch the killer. It's all just plain old grunt work. I don't know what I expected. The book is less than three hours long so I am not sure how much new technique could have been used, but it might have been nice to put one of the MC's in danger or at least in a tough situation to get out of at least once. Reading about plain old pounding the pavement to get leads to catch the killer is just not that interesting to me.

I have all eleven books in this series including the newest one that just recently released on my Kindle TBR list. I am hoping they get better with more detail and action and sleuthing and stumbling blocks in the other ten books.

The narrator was not horrible, but as I stated before I got the feeling I was listening to a radio program except it was just one person reading a book instead of a full cast dramatization like you might have heard on the radio way back when. I can't say that I was terribly impressed with his voice characterizations.His female characters didn't really sound female at all and the voice of Marcus was cartoonish except for when he was getting ready to kill someone. Then James Killavey tried his best to make him sound menacing, which made perfect sense but then it sounded like two different people entirely; Marcus and then the menacing killer.

I will probably buy more audio books by John C. Dalglish, but only if they are narrated by someone else. I don't see me buying any more books narrated by Mr. Killavey.

I received this book from the author through the Audio Books group on Goodreads in exchange for an honest review.