Chicago cop Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels has chased, and caught, dozens of dangerous criminals over the course of her career. But she’s about to meet her match.When Jack wakes up in a storage locker, bound and gagged, she knows with chilling certainty who her abductor is.He’s called “Mr. K.” More than two hundred homicides have been attributed to him. His victims have died in the most horrible ways … most horrible ways imaginable. He’s the essence of evil. Some think he’s just an urban legend. But he’s real. Jack has tangled with him twice in the past, and both times he managed to slip away.
Now Jack will finally have a chance to confront the maniac she’s been hunting for over twenty-five years. Unfortunately, it won’t be on her terms. In less than two hours, Mr. K is going to do to Jack what he’s done to countless others. And Jack is going to learn that sometimes the good guys don’t win…
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Another great installment for the Jack Daniels series!
A backstory:
Jack is in dire straits within this story as she wakes up not knowing where she is or what has happened to her – all she knows is that she is in lots of pain. She knows she is in deep trouble when she learns that she is tied up with rope and she cannot see where she is located but she learns that she is in some type of storage facility.
Then it finally dawns on her just who might have her in his clutches and Jack knows that it will be no easy feat to escape this lunatic as her memory comes into sharp focus when she realizes that it could be Mr. K who is known for eluding capture as he slays victims left and right.
In the meantime while Jack is tied up in an unknown place, her partner (Herb) and her friends Harry and Phineas Troutt are hunting like mad for her trying to pick up some kind of trail of what happened to her and who is responsible for her kidnapping. It will be no easy hunt as all three of them start out clueless, but once they start going through all of Jack’s arrests they finally come to a conclusion of who it could possibly be, but to find “him” will be another matter.
What happened to Jack and how did the killer kidnap her? Is the killer really Mr. K and if so, what are his plans for Jack? Does Jack’s friends and partner find her in time? No spoilers here as you will need to read the book!
Thoughts:
This story took some time to really get into it even though it jumps right away with something happening. With this series so far I have been handing out five stars for each book because I would be staying up late into the night while I felt I was walking a tight rope most of the time with these stories. This book not so much.
Don’t get me wrong – this is a great book but it has time jumps which I have said in other reviews that time jumping is rough for me as sometimes it throws me off of what is happening in the present and then having to remember what happens in the past to tie in with the present. This book though there are “two” time jumps – yes you read that right. Two jumps into the past – one time jump goes back twenty five years and the other time jump goes back three years – then you are shot forward back to the present. It goes like that throughout the whole book. Almost like clockwork – rinse and repeat back and forth to the end of the book.
So I read this book a little slower as I tried to stay up with what was happening twenty five years ago, three years ago and then into the “here and now”. I know the author did it like that to tell the story of the “how and why” of what was happening to the character Jack, but two time jumps is a little too much. So that is why I dropped it down a star – even though there is a warning at the beginning of the book as the author goes into detail of why he is doing time jumps in this book and I thought “oh boy – just what I need”, but I wanted to continue on with this series so I just plunged ahead and hoped for the best. I guess I was able to keep it all straight (amazingly enough) as I am writing this review.
As always the characters of Herb, Harry, and Phineas kept me in stitches with chuckles and laughter – there was no laughter with Jack though as she was in her tight situation so there was more of a somber feeling there. Otherwise this book kept me wrapped in suspense and intrigue. I am looking forward to reading the next book “Stirred” in this series. Giving this book four “Serial Killer Shake ‘n’ Bake” stars.
I would use 1 word for this story… DISTURBING. I couldn’t bring myself to stop reading it (not sure what that says about me) but I wouldn’t read it before bedtime. (learned that lesson the hard way ) The author note at the end of the book said there was 1 more Jack Daniels book but my library has a bunch more, what gives?
Shaken
Jacqueline ‘Jack’ Daniels, Book 7
By: J. A. Konrath
Narrated by: Angela Dawe, Dick Hill
This not only has great suspense, it is very character driven. The characters are well developed, the story was told by jumping from a couple of points in the past to present which got a bit weird, and there was more than one serial killer in the book.
The female narrator was great but the male narrator didn’t have many voices and there was several men.
Overal, I did enjoy it!