Now I don't know if I ever want to get married. Although I don't have the millions that the people in this book were willing to kill their spouses slowly and painfully for, it still sickens me very much.


It was a thrilling story right down to the very end. And I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys crime drama. If you've read anything else by Iles or Patterson or .... I don't know because I don't actually read a lot of this genre. Although, what I do read I have enjoyed.

Spoiler

The villain is such a brilliant genius I was actually afraid that he was going to get away with it. Very scary ideas presented with the idea of cancer being spread through a virus. And I understand that we know cancer can be caused by a virus, but the ideas presented in this book are targeted cancer to murder a loved one.

This was a great listen. It reminded me a little of that long ago movie with Dennis Quaid movie DOA where a man investigates his own murder. This was better than that movie but a similar premise. Alex Morse is told by her sister on her death bed that she was murdered by her husband. However Alex's sister died of Cancer. Alex unsure if her sister is correct decides to investigate and what she finds is a divorce attorney that seems to take cases that never wind up in divorce court but the spouses all end up dead of seemingly natural causes. All the spouses are rich and divorce would cost them millions. When Alex discovers a doctor could be the next victim she enlists his help but first she has to convince him that his wife is cheating and that his life is in danger.

This is a fast paced thriller. There are multiple points of view and many players in this race to catch a killer and save Chris Shepard from a similar fate as all those others spouses. While this isn't a Penn Cage story both Penn and his father both show up as minor characters which make the story feel familiar. I love when authors do this, having characters bridge other stories.

This book started out really strong, it is fast-paced and I was positive it would be the start of a very long relationship between Mr. Iles and me. Unfortunately, it all started to Peter out around page 300. When a book is 512 pages long one expects there to be some slumps, but I felt it never really held my interest after that.
Quickly I found myself skimming pages just to get it done and over with. Another problem I had was that I could not really connect with the characters. I wasn't attached to any of them. Some writers can capture your interest and have you become so attached to certain individuals in the story, but here I was kind of meh. Alex Morse jumped between tough FBI agent and whiny woman. Chris, the soon to be murdered husband was probably the most interesting out of the bunch, but really bad at picking wives. The bad guy was just too bad and the white, blonde sex bomb of a wife was also just too much.
In the end, I was annoyed by all of them.
There were some characters that had promise, but after a short mention, they were never talked about again. There were too many subplots to keep up with.
I think I am going to take a break from Mr. Iles books.

Slow to start, never really grabbed me the way his other books have.

Too much, too fast

One of my favorite authors but until the end I wasn't impressed. Ending was what I have come to expect from Greg Iles, but getting there was kinda rough.

True Evil by Greg Iles

Stars: 4/5

Publication date: March, 2019

Scrappymags 3-word review: It IS evil!!

All my reviews available at scrappymags.com

Genre: Mystery

Shortest summary ever: Alex Morse, FBI agent hears her sister’s last dying words as she passes from illness - that she was actually murdered. Now Morse has gone rogue to discover the truth and in the process finds who she thinks could be the next victim - a doctor named Chris Shepherd. Can she save Shepherd? Find the killer? IS there a killer or is she merely chasing a ghost?

What’s good under the hood: Dang this freaked me out on several levels. Nifty science elevated this book for me - I’m a smart cookie, but lacking in a solid chemistry background, so it was a book where I LEARNED which is always fun. The other awesome feature is well, the book is TWISTED. Twisted plot, twisted characters, twisted surprises. It’s scary because it’s realistic or seemed realistic enough to me. My brain started to question “Can that actually happen?” Then there are snakes... Why did it have to be snakes?