Ken Goddard

I had my doubts when I started this book but was pleased to see I was wrong. Ken Goddard's story grabs you from the first and doesn't let you go until you race through the final 100-150 pages, trying to see how it will unfold, and how crime scene investigator Collin Cellars can resolve the issue. A body is found in a remote cabin, investigating Oregon state troopers disappear, Cellars is alone in the house and he sees weird shadows. Not people, not creatures. Shadows. Then the body show more disappears. Just what is going on and who is the mysterious woman with a hypnotic presence he meets, Allesandra? Great story. Recommended. show less

Ken Goddard is the director of the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory, which might explain his overly conspiratorial view of the world. Nevertheless, he has a unique style and writes rousingly entertaining yarns featuring Henry Lightstone, an undercover special agent for the Department of the Interior.

This is the second I have read, and in each, the undercover teams must battle unscrupulous and powerfully rich people just dying to blow away endangered species like grizzlies and show more golden eagles. Lightstone's Bravo team stumbles into a massive conspiracy to destroy the radical environmental movement in Prey. Seeking to cover up their participation in an illegal hunt that Bravo team was about to close in on, the conspirators, high-ranking bureaucrats in the pay of some wealthy corporations, arrogantly try to suppress the agents' knowledge of their presence by using unseemly bureaucratic pressure. It starts to unravel and they decide they need to adopt more permanent measures to assure anonymity, but they haven't counted on the loyalty and dedication of the wildlife special agents.

Goddard writes with humor, and the books have an almost keystone cops feel as almost everything goes wrong that can but the good guys manage to pull it off regardless. Much fun and hard to put down. show less

The further adventures of Colin Cellars and the silent alien invasion.

Well, not silent, since dozens of people have disappeared. And the Feds know. Which leads to an NSA lab, the team kind'a getting back together. Violence. And lots and lots of CSI porn talk and details. The first book was more procedural and this one is more scifi thriller. Everyone knows what's coming and that they're outmatched, but also underestimated... hopefully.

You definitely do get into the mind of a trained crime show more scene tech, as written by a retired crime scene tech who worked, and lives, in the area portrayed in the book. Almost as if the author helped fight off an alien invasion... or not.

Fun scifi adventure novel, in the vein of an old Michael Crichton novel, or one of Lincoln Child's solo efforts. show less

More of a 2.5 than a three. The combination of a CSI and an alien encounter plot is a neat idea, but the CSI agent here seems a bit slow to catch on to what's happening, and the "four friends" aspect seemed forced. Also, in the audiobook it's a little disconcerting that a southern accent seems to come and go, and isn't consistently applied character by character. This is the first of three Colin Cellars books, and there is enough here that I wouldn't mind starting on the next one, but not show more enough to make me actively seek it out. One last thing - I didn't realize that the story itself dates back to 1999, since the audiobook dates from 2012. So it was a bit disconcerting to hear the mention of Zip drives and modems as being leading edge tech in the police lab! show less