Eight Days to Live

It starts with an art show. Jane is exhibiting her paintings at her friend Celine's Paris gallery and having great success. However, one of her paintings - Guilt - has attracted the attention of a cult based on worship of Judas. Though the image of the man in the painting came to Jane in a dream, the cultists recognize it as Judas and feel that she is blaspheming him. The only thing that will satisfy them is Jane's death as the annual sacrifice. They give her eight days to live and the deaths start piling up around her.

But Jane isn't alone. She is being protected by her old friend Jock and the formidable MacDuff. She also calls in the enigmatic Seth Caleb who has unusual talents and a need for Jane. Jane isn't at all sure about him and show more their relationship is a prickly one. But Jane will do anything that she has to do to protect the people she loves - especially Eve and Joe.

There are two main villains in this one who are equally evil but who express it in different ways. Millet is the loony who is the head of the cult and who gets off on torturing women. Roland is the behind the scenes puppetmaster who pointed Millet at Jane.

While Millet wants Jane as a fitting sacrifice in the annual Offering, Roland is more interested in getting hold of Judas' 30 pieces of silver. He believes that Jane can guide him to them.

The story was filled with action, danger, and excitement. The characters were well-drawn and the scenes suspenseful. I had the unique opportunity to listen to the MP3 audio of the first half of the book when I was traveling and then finishing the book by reading it from my TBR mountain. I enjoyed having a voice in my head for the characters based on the audio portion I heard.

I recommend this suspense title. Johansen writes compelling thrillers about interesting characters. show less

Johansen's latest suffers from the lack of her main character, Eve Duncan. Jane MacGuire makes an interesting enough central character, but it's Eve who really drives this series, and the focus on her forensic sculpting is sorely missed. Joe Quinn barely even puts in an appearance, so our usual central characters are simply missing in action.

Seth Caleb has returned, though, and continues to stretch the reader's limits on how much supernaturalism you're willing to take in one suspense novel. His talents propel more than a few deus ex machinea moments in the book, making some plot points seem rather strained.

Also, this book depends on the reader having an awfully good memory of previous entries in the series, especially ones involving show more MacGuire. You almost feel like you need to go back and reread one novel in particular to have a good grasp on what's going on.

Overall, I felt like the novel was a weaker entry in the series. It suffered from not having Eve Duncan and her forensic sculpting talents at the center, and there were almost too many characters; their motives became tricky to keep straight. It's not to say that Jane MacGuire doesn't make an interesting central character, but isn't this supposed to be the Eve Duncan series?? This novel just felt out of joint with the series as a whole, like it wandered off course of the series's main focus. show less

Where to start? Reading the Eve Duncan books are like watching the movie 2012 for me. I loved the movie! I thought it was thrilling and very fast paced and it kept my attention through the whole movie. However, throughout the whole movie, my husband and I were saying "yeah, right" and "how lucky can you get"? That is exactly how I feel about this book. It grabbed me from the very first sentence. I was totally into the book and nothing could distract me once I started reading. But, through the whole book I am thinking, "wow...how lucky can you get" or "how many times can you escape death that closely"? It was crazy how many times Jane MacGuire almost gets herself killed and at the last moment, escapes. It's also frusterating to me how show more spoiled and childish Jane acts (much like Eve Duncan in previous books). She has no thought for those who care about her. Everything is her fault and so she is the one (and the ONLY one) who can fix it and so she constantly is putting herself into danger.

So, while I thought the book was fast paced, exciting and thrilling, I was not impressed with the childishness of the characters and the total unbelievability of the storyline. show less

These Eve Duncan books are always thrilling and fast-paced. Some of the early ones, like this one, are starting to be a little dated. They still always have interesting characters and the settings are exotic and interesting. I just don't understand why the whole evil world is trying to kill Eve and her daughter Jane. This whole series of books offer great beach reads. Highly recommended.

Members of a mysterious cult have decided that Jane MacGuire, Eve Duncan's adopted daughter, will be their ultimate sacrifice.

Eve is a painter and one of her paintings, titled "Guilt" promotes blasphemy, according to the cult.

In this multi layered story, there is travel from such places as England, Paris, Tel Aviv and Scotland as Jane and her group of good people oppose Jack Millet and members of Sang Noir- a cult that deals back to the time of Christ.

There is good suspense in the story that should be read slowly in order to get the various meanings and spiritual elements. However, I did find difficulty in a couple of areas although I was reading much of the story while in the hospital so the problem may be with me. My reading show more difficulties were with the great number of characters, there were times when I wasn't sure who was speaking and I had to go back to an earlier time to learn the identification of a speaker. Also, some of the characters just appeared in a paragraph without identification or background, just their name.

The forces of good vs.evil did remind me of "The Stand," which I believe is Stephen King's best novel.

I do enjoy Iris Johansen and look forward to reading more of her novels but this book just missed the mark with me. show less

A decent read but not what I expect from this author. Perhaps it was just a little too sci-fi from an author that I expect to receive mystery-suspense/romance.

We once again meet Eve Duncan and her daughter Jane. This adventure has us looking for Judas' coins that were paid to him, from the states, to Ireland, to syria the path travels ever farther in a race for time to save Eve's life. This book was unfortunately not fast-paced, had lots of promise but lost the intensityof the book.