Rage

Faces of Evil, Book 4

By: Debra Webb

Narrated by: Carol Schneider

When Jess Harris moved back to her Alabama hometown, she thought she'd left her past behind her. But the blood bath the new Major Crimes deputy chief finds at a murder scene is beyond even the savagery of Eric Spears, the serial killer who now haunts Jess's life with terrifying text messages. Amid eerie echoes of the Charles Manson - like massacre, Jess investigates the dismemberment of a cop's wife, carried out while the woman's baby lay sleeping down the hall. The discovery of two more headless victims makes Jess wonder if it's a gang-related slaying, a personal vendetta…or something else. And the sudden reappearance of her ex-husband makes her question her future with Chief of Police Dan Burnett. As the net widens to include a shocking suspect, Jess realizes that the identity of the killer may lie with an autistic eight-year-old boy. With inner-city tensions at an all-time high and the community calling for blood, Jess must race to save an innocent child-and prevent a final, horrifying act of rage.

©2013 Debra Webb (P)2013 Tantor

good story, narration not so great

If you could sum up Rage in three words, what would they be?

The narration akmost takes away from the story. The "accents" she tries are terrioble. One if ther characters is Hispanic and the accent almost sounds Scots. Her Southern is bad as well. Need to find a new narrator,

How could the performance have been better?

Quit with the accents. You cant so them well

The Heroine is great and irritating

I'm already on the next book (#5) and have read all of the previous books except 0.5. The stories are interesting and unique in each book, which is unusual in serials like this where most tend to just re-wrap the same storyline over and over. I'm very grateful for the pretty blunt look at the real tensions in Southern cities (I live in Atlanta) and the author seems to have tried to keep overt white privilege in check.

My main complaint is that I would hope that the main character, Jess, would be more self confident in herself by age 40. I'm 43 and while I definitely have my moments of insecurity, they are way less than when I was in my late 20s. Jess however doesn't seem to see herself clearly at all. I can understand when she's less confident around Dan's exes and I understand how the way The Player case played out while she was still at the FBI really made her lose her trust in her instincts, and that's definitely used well in that story, but the whole "everyone is better looking than me" schtick is really annoying and I think it undercuts the character's force. Also, I think I just realized that there are rarely in-depth descriptions of other characters who I can only assume must be not attractive enough for Jess to bother comparing herself negatively against. I can't recall the description of Wells or Lily at all. I'm sure Webb gave them descriptions, but it must've been only once, whereas the Beautiful People are described multiple times. It was just too much and took me out of the story.

The narrator is okay. I have mixed feelings about her. Her southern accent is inconsistent and sometimes just too much. Not everyone in the South speaks that way.

But like I said, the crimes and characters are really interesting and I have stayed engaged throughout the series.