I was lucky enough to read a copy of THE SILENT CORNER, the first book in the Jane Hawk series just before I read this book. Since THE CROOKED STAIRCASE is book three have I only missed THE WHISPERING ROOM. However, I felt reading this book alone worked fine, despite that. I was very glad that I at least had read book one because I felt that I would have been a bit lost without the knowledge from that book. And, that's my advice to readers, start from the beginning.
THE CROOKED STAIRCASE starts off strong, just like THE SILENT CORNER did. It has the kind of book opening that I always love to read when it comes to thrillers. Jane Hawk is still on a mission to find and destroy the people behind her husband and other people's suicides. She has her son safely hidden away with two friends she trusts completely and now she is going after the next person on the list to find the ones masterminding this. In a sidestory, we also get to meet two twins that are next one the Hamlet list, the next to die.
This book is pretty thick and now and then did I feel that the pacing slowed down. Not that the book was bad, it just didn't have the same flow in the story that THE SILENT CORNER had. And, as much as I enjoyed Jane Hawk's story it is the twins' story and Jane's son story that moved me most. Jane is tough and I think one feels that she will be alright, while her son and the twins are more in danger of getting killed, or in Jane's son's case, used as a bait.
Dean Koontz doesn't hold back the punches and one can't be sure in this book who will live and who will die. Then, came the ending. BAM! I mean it, it's a bloody annoying cliffhanger ending. When the story started to really pick up the pace and be really interesting, then it ended. Yes, I will definitely read the next book!
Jane Hawkβwho dazzled readers in The Silent Corner
and The Whispering Roomβfaces the fight of her
life, against the threat of a lifetime, in this electrifying
new thriller by #1 New York Times bestselling
suspense master Dean Koontz.
βI could be dead tomorrow. Or something worse than
dead.β
Jane Hawk knows she may be living on borrowed time. But as
long as sheβs breathing, sheβll never cease her one-woman
war against the terrifying conspiracy that threatens the
freedomβand free willβof millions. Battling the strange
epidemic of murder-suicides that claimed Janeβs husband, and
is escalating across the country, has made the rogue FBI
agent a wanted fugitive, relentlessly hunted not only by the
government but by the secret cabal behind the plot.
Deploying every resource their malign nexus of power and
technology commands, Janeβs enemies are determined to see
her dead . . . or make her wish she was.
Janeβs ruthless pursuers canβt stop her from drawing a
bead on her prey: a cunning man with connections in high
places, a twisted soul of unspeakable depths with an army of
professional killers on call. Propelled by her righteous
fury and implacable insistence on justice, Jane will make
her way from southern Southern California to the snow-swept
slopes of Lake Tahoe to confront head-on the lethal forces
arrayed against her. But nothing can prepare her for the
chilling truth that awaits when she descends the crooked
staircase to the dark and dreadful place where her long
nightmare was born.
No excerpt available.
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