Title: Criminal Minds: Jump Cut
Author: Max Allan Collins
Series: Criminal Minds Tie-Ins
Publish Date: November 6, 2007
Publisher: Signet
Format: Print, Paperback
Goodreads Summary:
The Behavioral Analysis Unit, an elite team of FBI profilers, are tasked with examining the nation’s most twisted criminal minds-anticipating their next moves before they strike again…
The BAU team is dispatched to Lawrence, Kansas, to investigate a series of fatal stabbings among the town’s homeless population. The victims have all been found freshly bathed, neatly groomed, and wearing new clothes. To profiler Jason Gideon, these look like carefully staged murders in isolated settings, fulfilling the sick fantasies of one or more Unknown Subjects.
When the kidnapping of a young heiress presents a second, seemingly unrelated crime for the BAU to help solve, Gideon deduces a sinister connection, despite the variance in MOs. The kidnap victim must be found – before she too is a player in the mind games of a pair of UnSubs who are inventing horrific new ways to kill.
Review: I’ve been on a Criminal Minds binge lately, and I happened to remember that I owned all the tie-in novels. I’ve read them several times before, but not in the last three years. And wow, did these not age well.
The case presented in the novel is fine, matching the length and subject matter that would normally be present in the show. The author takes the time to get into the head of the UnSubs, which makes things a little interesting.
What is less interesting is just about everything else. There’s an overabundance of description of everyone and every thing. Six pages of a homeless man’s life? Not necessary. The constant need to remind the reader that Dr. Spencer Reid is 25 but looks young for his age? It’s rude. The stilted dialogue among the main characters that puts them vastly out of character? It’s distracting.
But the thing that really annoyed me was the horribly aged “jokes” and descriptions. Within the first fifty pages, there were several character that, within their points of view, made some rather uncomfortable comments about female characters and their clothing. The kicker was the “joke” told towards the end of Chapter One, which was apparently about logic… but it really was just a façade to make a homosexual joke. Even in 2007, that wasn’t cool.
I’m rereading all three books, but this one reminded me exactly why I stopped reading tie-in books. At this point, I think I’d rather stick to the fanfiction.
Rating: 3/5
Goodreads Goal 17/52
(Quick note: I didn’t write a review for the 6th, 8th, 10th and 16th “books” I read this year, as they are the first three The Old Guard: Tales Through Time issues, which are 32 pages each. I decided I’ll just review the series as a whole when the final issue is released in September.)
