The Night Season

Ah, now this is what I've been waiting for with this series - just Susan, Archie, and a straightforward murder mystery. No Gretchen bloody Lowell. I know she's the 'hook' for these books, but she isn't clever, she's just irritating. I notice that she makes a return in the next instalment, escaping yet again, yada yada, but for this one story, I was free!

I really love stories based on historical fact, and the 1948 flood which led to the wartime city of Vanport being washed away certainly supplies enough old bones to tell a tale. The Willamette Valley flood of 1996 also creates an incredible atmosphere for Archie and Susan's investigation into drownings involving a deadly sea creature (I kid you not - but it works!) Everyone is wet show more through from beginning to end, sloshing around in wellies and plastic macs, to the point where I was grateful to be reading the story in the warmth and comfort of home!

The case turns personal - again - for Archie, when poor Henry nearly becomes a victim of the river killer they are trying to trace (I'm not sure why he alone survives - hardly a spoiler! - apart from the Law of Main Characters). Susan, writing about a skeleton washed up in the flood, is also drawn into the investigation - again - when the killer leaves a memento in her purse. I don't even mind that these stories always seem to follow the same routine, usually climaxing in Susan walking straight into the killer's path and being taken hostage, because Susan and Archie are a great team (just don't mention the 'G' word). She's resourceful, he's dependable, and Chelsea Cain's storytelling is perfectly paced and very funny.

Ah, well, back to the world's most boring serial killer in book five, darling. show less

This is the fourth book in Chelsea Cain's gory series about a beautiful serial killer and the cop she caught and tortured. The first three books concerned themselves with the twisted relationship between the two of them, but with Gretchen safely in prison, Archie's been given time to heal and begin rebuilding his life without her.

Portland is flooding. Heavy rainfall and snowmelt have combined to put much of downtown in danger and thousands of people are working to block the rising water. The water has also unearthed a skeleton and reporter Susan Ward uses its discovery to write an article on the long forgotten flood of 1948, which wiped out the town of Vanport. She's also covering a new story of a serial killer who disguises his kills show more as drownings, a not unusual event in a city whose river is running wild.

This is the best of Cain's series so far. The gore level is a little lower than before, but that's no bad thing when it leaves her room to let her writing shine. Cain has created a wonderful character in Susan Ward, a woman who will eat Jolly Ranchers that have been stuck to a coffee table for weeks and allow a goat into her house when it's raining. The plot is almost unbearably suspenseful in places, the murder weapon should be silly, but is instead deeply creepy. show less

Gretchen Lowell takes a back seat in Cain's latest, and that's a good thing, at least to this reader's mind. Archie Sheridan is very much present and it was a joy to have him -- mostly -- all to ourselves this time. That the story has its genesis in a long ago flooding of the Willamette River which is threatening to do so again made it a particularly gripping read. There were a couple stretches of credulity here for me, but I enjoyed it and have no trouble recommending it to fans of Archie.

I didn't know how Cain was going to pull off another book in this series without the underlying "Beauty Killer" plot, but she did it. I find her writing so crisp and funny, and the mystery in this one was really compelling. I was way less gory than the previous entries. She also weaves in some Portland history. I don't think this should be called the Gretchen Lowell series, anymore. How about the Susan Ward series?

[Cross-posted to Knite Writes]

I’ve seen people complaining about Gretchen not being in this one, but I honestly think it was a breath of fresh air compared the weirdness of book three. Cain does a good job showing how Archie operates when Gretchen isn’t in the picture, which is something it’s been really hard to ascertain thus far given Gretchen’s overwhelming influence on him.

I think it was interesting to see some Archie development that wasn’t directly related to his connection with Gretchen, especially concerning his feelings toward Susan, his team, Henry, and the kidnapped boy. We got to dig a lot deeper into Archie’s sacrificial hero complex and thoughts about himself as a leader. It’s a side of him that has long been show more overshadowed by his obsessiveness toward Gretchen and her mind games with him.

Of course, the whole octopus thing still makes me laugh every time I think about it. Seriously? A unique murder weapon, sure, but it’s kind of ridiculous to think about using that thing to actually kill people. I kept trying to picture it. It was a little out there.

And yet, I still found this one more plausible than book three. Take that as you will. show less

This title has absolutely nothing to do with the content. If it did, it would have the word "flood" in it. I opened up my copy, not knowing what to expect. I read the flap twice and realized I have DNF'ed every book in this series, but I can never remember why, only how irritated I am when I set the book down. The author writes a great premise and knows how to set things up--characters, setting--but somehow once the story starts, my interest falls apart. Not entirely this time: somehow, I stuck it through. When I saw this was a police procedural set in Portland, Oregon, I got so excited. When someone mentioned the word textrodoxyn, the spelling of which I am sure I unintentionally mangled, I had to refrain from shouting, "Ooh! Bee show more venom! Let's do this, book version of 'Grimm'!" Yeah, no, hugely disappointed that this book is the furthest thing from that. This was like a really boring "Criminal Minds" episode, complete with a serial killer who uses unusual methods and has weird hangups due to family misfortunes and tragedies from fifty years ago, ten years before he was even born. Reviewers and other critics sometimes indicate they think a non-character is practically a character in a book. The weather, a house in a haunted house mystery. I've always thought that was such a weird opinion to have, but now that I've read this book, I get it. The river, the flooding, the rain, the storming were all way, way more interesting than anything else going on in the novel. I was entranced by how the author writes weather and natural disasters, and my boredom stupor shook itself off anytime they showed up on the page. The story is a pleasant, if boring, enough way to pass time. The author cares a lot about connections her characters have to each other and with others, which can be a really nice read. Ultimately, this series clearly wasn't my thing. show less

Chelsea Cain is one smart cookie. She entered the thriller scene in 2007 with Heartsick, the delicious little story of a beautiful and brilliant lady serial killer--Gretchen Lowell, known as the Beauty Killer--and Archie Sheridan, the cop who pursues and is seduced by her. Cain followed up with Sweetheart in 2008 and Evil at Heart the following year, and both novels featured the twisted pas de deux of Gretchen Lowell and Archie Sheridan. She got better as a writer with each book, and, amazingly, managed to keep the relationship between her two antagonists fresh and inventive each time. But, though we readers might never get enough of Gretchen Lowell, Ms. Cain realized that it was time, at least for now, to put her on a back burner and show more give us something new.

The Night Season opens with a brief prologue, a flashback to an historic flood in Portland, Oregon in 1948, in which an entire town was washed away. Cut to present day Portland, which is in the midst of its first truly bad storm of the century and is battening down all the hatches for the flooding to come. So of course, with everybody working so hard and getting so wet, it seems inevitable that bodies will start washing up around town. It's not long before Archie Sheridan realizes that the bodies being found are not simply victims of drowning, but rather, the work of a particularly inventive serial killer, whose weapon of choice is--but that would be telling.

Throw in a couple of dramatic rescues of near-drownings by Archie (he does have a bit of a white knight complex); layer in richness of character with the increasingly important Susan Ward, girl reporter and potential love interest; tie in a missing kid; don't forget that historic flood at the beginning; then bring it all to a head with an incredibly tense climactic chase through downtown Portland at night when the river finally decides once and for all to overflow its banks: now you've got an entertainment that can't be beat.

Oh, and I'm not giving any plot points away by telling you that The Night Season ends as Gretchen Lowell's sanity hearing begins...mwahaha. show less