Compulsion by Jennifer Chase

Not for the timidby MikeDraper

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September 19, 2009: Emily Stone has a mission, a life goal, she wants to track down child-killers and then after accumulating evidence against them, emailing that evidence anonymously to the police to lead to the killer's arrest.

After one such episode, while driving home, her car is run off the road in a hit and run accident. She's injured and taken to the hosp. While there, the police want to know about the weapons and laptop in her car. She tells them she's a writer and the weapons are for safeth and the laptop for her writing.

When she arrives home, her friend and neighbor, Theresa Blandon, tells her about the new neighbor, Donald Everett, who is a crazy man and has been intimidating the neighbors. Later, Everett has an unpleasant meeting with Emily.

She goes to the police to see if they can help. At the station she meets Det. Ray Lopez who is reading a homicide report. Em tells him about the neighbor and what he is doing to those living near him. She asks if Ray would run a check to see if there is anything on Everett. Ray seems preoccupied but after Em leaves he runs the check and there have been many complaints against Everett. Since Ray took a liking to Emily, he goes to her home and stop at Everett's house but they don't have enough for a warrant.

Emily can't seem to stop herself and she hears about a homicide and suspected two serial killers working together. She goes to a small town to the murder sceen and looks for evidence. When she walks into an old shack, someone closes the door and locks her in. Shortly thereafter a pit bull begins attacking the door trying to get to her. Luckily she sees that the walls are thin and kicks one out and gets to her car before the dog can reach her.

Arriving home, she decides to break into Everett's home to see what she can find. She looks at his computer and around the home but doesn't find anything useful. When he arrives home, she has a mask and ties him up and tries to question him. He recognizes her and she leaves. Why she went into the home to stir up the neighbor seems illogical knowing he's a crazed person and able to inflict harm on the other neighbors.

Em knows where Ray Lopez is staying. She visits him and tells him that her parents were murdered and that's why she tries to find and stop killers. They become intimate and later she asks if she can help with the homicide he's working on.

There is some good action and plenty of suspense in the story but the protagonist's motives were left unexplained for too long. Even then, her decision making was suspect, going to the murder scene without weapons and unleashing the neighbor and leaving him to possibly hurt others.

The story is a difficult one to read with the killings and the easy with which these people can take life. Still, it did keep my attention and for the reader interested in serial killer stories or crimes against women, and psychoanalytical theory of killers, this could be appealing.

The Killers are Comingby TheRightWord

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April 04, 2009: The Killers are Coming!

That's right two killers. Jennifer Chase takes us into the life of serial killer-hunter Emily Stone. Emily is the secret behind the resolution of many serial killings and kidnappings, but no one knows her name. Her messages to the appropriate detectives and investigators are always sent anonymously, but always full of information carefully collected to ensure convictions and long sentences for the criminals.

That is until one astute police officer traces the messages back to Emily's computers that are recovered from a car accident scene. As Rick Lopez zeroes in on Emily's latest investigative target, he discovers that she is next on the hit list.

You will enjoy the twists and turns, the ups and downs, the little touch of romance and the right amount of justice that Chase includes in this story.

My rating of three comes from my issues around the use of present tense and inconsistent verb tenses, mostly. I found it hard to set aside my editing hat and I never quite managed to wrap my mind around the third person omniscient POV in present tense. Third person omniscient is tricky enough to work with in past tense, and trickier in present tense.

I would still recommend the story. As a CSI/forensic science reader, I enjoyed it and know that others will as well. Perhaps other readers won't find the present tense an issue (I have read other reviews where the reviewers didn't seem to mind it).