Review of DAMAGED by Alex Kava

Review of DAMAGED by Alex Kava (see her website)

A MAGGIE O'DELL NOVEL

Doubleday, July 2010

<MAP NAME="boxmap-p8"><AREA SHAPE="RECT" COORDS="14, 200, 103, 207" HREF="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm/privacy-policy.html?o=1" ><AREA COORDS="0,0,10000,10000" HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/kisskillzapcom" ></MAP><img src="http://rcm-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/rcm/120x240.gif" width="120" height="240" border="0" usemap="#boxmap-p8" alt="Shop at Amazon.com"> Intrepid FBI agent Maggie O'Dell is back again in this fast-reading thriller, set in Pensacola, Florida on the eve of a potentially catastrophic hurricane. A cooler full of assorted body parts has just been fished out of Pensacola Bay, and Maggie is on loan to the Department of Homeland Security to help figure out who is dead and how they ended up that way.

An assortment of secondary characters pretty much steal the show in this book. There's Liz Bailey, a swimmer for a Coast Guard helicopter rescue team; her brother-in-law, in the funeral business and looking to solve his financial insolvency by getting into the medical-research body parts industry; and the mysterious Joe Black (as in the Brad Pitt character playing "Death"), a soulless opportunist who seems to show up at the funeral home with an awful lot of bodies.

It's an engaging story, very fast-moving, extremely well researched. But I found it a little thin compared to some of Kava's other works. It was easy to figure out what was going on from the very beginning; the entertainment value came from watching the law enforcement people figure it out before more people died.

A good beach read but probably not one that will stay with me for very long.

See more BooksForABuck.com reviews of novels by Alex Kava.

Three Stars

Reviewed 6/27/10

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