The Night Killer: A Diane Fallon Forensic Investigation

This was a very suspenseful book in this series. Diane Fallon is picking up some arrowheads for the museum from a couple way up in the Georgia Hills. It is raining on her way back, she has an encounter with a tree holding a skeleton. Then someone chases her and sets their dogs on her. This is just one of the suspenseful areas of the book. Very good.

I love Beverly Connor's Diane Fallon series. I like all the characters and how they are developed. They grow with each book. There is never just one story line, there are always related story lines that tie in by the end of the book. This one was particularly good because I thought that I had figured out who the killer was and then discovered that I was only partially right!

This is another Beverly Conner forensics mystery. As usual she delivers a fast paced, well written, adventure with lots of twists and turns to make for a busy evenings entertainment. She presents a strong female heroine, well educated who thinks logically and can deliver with grace and style. Enjoy.

I have a meter I judge books by. I call it the angst to action ratio meter. A lot of fiction has pages and pages detailing the thought process of its female characters. Self doubt, worry, anxiety, denial, self pity... You name a negative emotion and some authors wallow in it. It would seem quite a few writers basically haven't much of a story to tell, so they fill up space by playing an endless mind-loop of `what-if's, why-not's and woe-is-me's. On the other hand, there are female characters like Beverly Connor's Dr. Dianne Fallon who just go about the process of telling a story in a straight forward and exciting fashion. That's the kind of novel I enjoy. Fast paced and full of action with a heroine that is neither wishy-washy nor in need of constant rescue. In Connor's latest offering The Night Killer, Dr Fallon visits Roy Barre's remote mountain farm to pick up a collection of Indian artifacts he has donated to the museum. As evening approaches, she drives back down the treacherous mountain road and is caught in a thunderstorm. Lost and disoriented, Dianne sees a farm house ahead and decides to ask the farmer for directions. That's when lightening strikes a tree beside the road and it falls onto the hood of her SUV. She peers thru the streaming windshield at the face of a skeleton staring back at her. Deciding she probably doesn't want much close contact with homeowners who store bodies in their shrubbery, Dianne attempts to find her way on foot back up the mountain to the Barre's farm. Meanwhile, the house's occupants turn their hounds loose to find her. See what I mean about angst to action. Connor's books move forward at such a fast pace there isn't time for the character to indulge in much introspection and the rethinking of every action. I believe this is the eighth book in Connor's Dianne Fallon series. Any of these books can be read out of sequence. For anyone who starts with The Night Killer, here is a little background that may be useful. Dr Dianne Fallon is a forensic anthropologist, archaeologist, and former human rights investigator. She spent several years in third world countries, uncovering mass graves and attempting to gather evidence of human rights violations and atrocities. The death of her adopted daughter at the hands of one of the tyrants she was investigating has brought her back to the US to heal and choose a new direction for her life. An old socialite friend offered Dianne the position of director of a small natural history museum in rural Georgia. Local politics influenced Dianne's decision to also accept the job as head of the county's crime scene investigation unit. A marriage of the museum's resources with the crime lab's needs seemed a perfect solution for a cash strapped small town without an abundance of crime. If this all sounds vaguely familiar, you may have seen an episode or two of Fox TV's Bones. Although Bones is supposed to be loosely based on Kathy Reich's Temperance

I love this series!! I wish there were more books but if they came out faster, they wouldn't be so carefully written. This is what the Kay Scarpetta series started out to be before Patricia Cornwell went over a cliff somewhere and the whole thing ended up in conspiracy/paranoid Weirdo-land. The Diane Fallon books have interesting, believable characters, great plots, plenty of action, fascinating forensics. I like the Lindsay Chamberlain series, too. I hope they keep coming for a long time without losing steam.