Before He Sees

A Mackenzie White Mystery, Book 2

By: Blake Pierce

Narrated by: Elaine Wise

Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

FBI agent-in-training Mackenzie White struggles to make her mark in the FBI Academy in Quantico, trying to prove herself as a woman and as a transplant from Nebraska. Hoping she has what it takes to become an FBI agent and leave her life in the Midwest behind for good, Mackenzie just wants to keep a low profile and impress her superiors.

But all that changes when the body of a woman is found in a garbage dump. The murder bears shocking similarities to the Scarecrow Killer - the case that made Mackenzie famous in Nebraska - and in the frantic race against time to stop a new serial killer, the FBI decides to break protocol and give Mackenzie a chance on the case.

It is Mackenzie's big break, her chance to impress the FBI - but the stakes have never been higher. Not everyone wants her on the case, and everything she touches seems to go wrong. As the pressure mounts and the killer strikes again, Mackenzie finds herself as a lone voice in a sea of experienced agents, and she soon realizes she is in way over her head. Her entire future with the FBI is in jeopardy.

As tough and determined as Mackenzie is, as brilliant as she is in hunting down killers, this new case proves an impossible riddle, something just beyond her reach. She may not even have time to crack it as her own life falls apart around her.

©2016 Blake Pierce (P)2016 Blake Pierce

Narrator's. Voice does not fit storyline

I could have enjoyed this story but why on earth would they have someone with a full English accent read this? It threw it off for me and was a huge distraction. Otherwise the story was an ok read.

British accent?

Interesting characters and pretty engaging story but the British accent and pronunciation was disconcerting. Is only an issue on audio book.

good book

loved it, buying the series, i feel being its set in america with fbi agents, the narrator shouldn't be British, although her reading is superb. she really makes it exciting the accent is just off.

unbelievable

Good story with a few areas where I had to willingly suspend disbelief that an FBI agent, or anypne, would make certain leaps of intuition. But the narrator rendered it non believanle. She does a great job, but this FBI story is no place for a full-on British accent.

Interesting

Story was good although the accent of the characters was British but it took place in th US

An average FBI thriller

This is the second book by Blake Pierce that I have read. The first one was in the Avery Black series. This one, however, was the second book in MacKenzie White series. While decidedly better than the other book I read, the plot is very simple and the mystery seems easily solved. Try as I might I had a hard time feeling any connection with any of the characters in the book, it just didn't seem to happen.
Furthermore, as with the other book I have read by the author, the superior officers (to the main character) are described in a way that seems almost cartoonish, blowhards that overreact and are unwilling to listen, even to common sense.
The performance of the narrator was okay, not bad, nothing amazing either.

Before He Sees

What made the experience of listening to Before He Sees the most enjoyable?

Again, as I have said in the previous book, the way she projects "the hard-headedness" of this detective.

What other book might you compare Before He Sees to and why?

Before He Kills, because they have the same detective, same problems.

What does Elaine Wise bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

See above.

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

No

Any additional comments?

Good book, Pierce just doesn't disappoint, I'm happy to say.

Performance Inconsistent with Story!

A story set in DC about a female police officer from Minnesota becoming an FBI agent and solving serial killer cases is right up my alley! However, the performance was so incongruous with the story, I couldn't stay focused on it. All of the characters had British/Irish accents!!!! They are US FBI agents living in DC speaking with heavy accents! It was sooooooo distracting.

This pretty good novella

loses impact as Pierce tries to turn it into to a full length novel. Interesting plot, stretched out by some unbelievable buracracy. Sympathetic and believable shero from book 1 of the series starts becoming a pitiful girl who makes bad choices by the middle of this story, book 2.

Knock Knock

Mackenzie really wanted to join the FBI. She had solved a big case in Nebraska while still an undergraduate but was transferred to a big city branch of the Academy when they needed help. She was known to do things her own way which didn't usually didn't sit well with her superiors.
Nude female bodies were turning up in the landfill and Mackenzie and her assigned partner were hopeful they could catch the stone cold killer before another dead woman surfaced at the landfill.
I enjoyed the way the story was presented. Introduce the killer and Mackenzie, then follow McKenzie as she tries to figure out who the killer is and catch him, her way.