Last Words by Mariah Stewart is the second book in the "Last" trilogy.  I really enjoyed Last Look and had high hopes for Last Words.  What a disappointment. 

It's your very basic serial killer thriller.  Small town, some very hideous deaths, and everyone's looking over their shoulders.  Especially since the police chief and the FBI agent who's been called in to help are fairly certain the killer is a local - probably a well-known, well-respected resident of the town.  In other words, "one of their very own" has gone rogue.

The fun, in this type of book, is figuring out who the bad guy is.  And it's great if we can be surprised, at the end.  Not because a solution came flying out of left field, but because subtlety and small clues played their roles throughout the story, and led us just slightly off-course. 

But in this book, clues are laid out in front of us like a well-lit path through the woods.  But for some reason, the police and FBI don't see what's right in front of them.  In fact, for a change, I was able to guess the bad guy's identity long before the police did.  And that's part of the problem with this book.  I shouldn't be smarter than the police and the FBI.  And I shouldn't recognize a blatant trick while they march right into a setup.  So either I'm incredibly smart or the authorities in this book were just lame.  I concede the latter.  The investigation was just badly handled, and the story was, therefore, a disappointment.

Another problem with this book is that we are supposed to really like the FBI agent.  We get to know a good deal about her, through some detailed character development.  We learn of her upbringing as well as a tragedy that hit her family in the past.  But even through all of that, I simply didn't like her.  I felt like she leaned on her past, using it as an excuse to throw her life away, seeking answers in the bottom of a bottle of wine.  It would have been one thing, if they painted her past tragedies as somehow her fault.  But they weren't.  She was an innocent victim in all that happened.  Yet, she feels guilty.  Like she should have been able to read people's minds, predict the future, and prevent the events from happening.  It's one thing to wish things had been different; it's another thing entirely to waste your life away on senseless guilt.

Further, she's a terrible agent!  She shows up to crime scenes completely unprepared, goes off the grid when she should be reachable, then walks into dangerous situations without bothering to call for backup.  She's very lucky she was surrounded by people who were competent, or her story might have ended quite differently.

Finally, when we do find out for sure who the bad guy is, it's all pretty much a letdown.  The ending was thrown together quickly, without anything resembling substance.  Overall, this book was a disappointment, and should be skipped. 


Last Look


Recommended: No