The Mystery Starts Here

I’ve read other books by Lisa Jackson and I know when I pick one of her books up, that I’ll be doing a lot of skimming. I have no idea why her editor doesn’t prune down a lot of her bloated verbiage, but…I guess as long as she sells they keep publishing her. Jackson comes up with good plots, but I haven’t read one of her books that wouldn’t have been much, much better with 150 – 200 fewer words. That said…

I picked up one of her older books at the library, “Last to Die” because it had an interesting premise. Someone is waylaying women in the Bitter roots area of Montana in the winter, by shooting out their tires of their cars so they crash The killer then rescues them and lets them start healing from any injuries they obtained in the accident…then ties them to a tree, nude, and lets them freeze to death. The killer carves a star into the tree above their heads with two letters. Sounds interesting, huh? Well, it could have been. The story ambles along at a very slow pace. It jumps from character to character, but Jackson never really develops any of the characters to the point you care about them. Of course there’s a blizzard to hamper the efforts of local law enforcement.  Speaking of the local law – that was one huge red flag. All the dead women are found tied to trees around the small town of Grizzly Falls, Montana – but the police force is huge. They have several detectives, lots of cops, crime scene analysts – way too many people for a small town.

There are twists and turns and a LOT of boring internal dialog. I won’t bother to tell you any more because I would not advise you to read this book. Why? Because Jackson does not solve the crime! Yes, that’s right – no ending, no solution. Instead she has the unmitigated gall to tell her readers to pick up the NEXT book, “Chosen to Die” that was published a full year after “Last to Die,” and she’ll finish the story! HUH? So, the reader just spent almost $8.00 for a paperback novel, it took several days to read and….now he’s supposed to wait another year to find out who the killer is???? I don’t think so.

I would never have expected this type of shoddy behavior from a best selling author like Jackson. I’m not sure why she did this but…I will never read another book of Lisa Jackson’s again. I will never spend a penny on a book by Lisa Jackson again and I will tell everyone I know who loves to read mysteries to do the same. Why would anyone support an author who pulls this kind of trick? There are so many lessor-know authors who wrote SO much better than Jackson. Let’s all support their work and stop buying books by Lisa Jackson. Maybe she’ll realize it’s not nice to fool your readers!

That’s my take – what do YOU think?