18 SECONDS - George D Shuman, BOT in the car

Listened to this up and down story the last few days for my commute. The story is a wee bit roller-coastery and sort of meanders in points of view, but it is a good story and especially so because it's narrated by George Guidall, one of my favorites.

The premise is supremely intriguing. One of the main characters is blind and has the amazing psychic ability of reading the last 18 seconds of a person's memory after the person dies. It's helped archeologists find treasure and cops to find killers.

And there is one last serial killer, Sykes, to catch and he is truly awful. He and his girlfriend kidnapped women in the 70's and were never caught. He went to prison for killing a busload of teens after running them off the road while he was running from the cops and under the influence of drugs. The girlfriend was never caught. Sykes is later 'rehabilitated' and released after finding out he has terminal cancer. He is back on the kill prowl.

The book sort of slowly builds up and then it's like the author realizes he has a quota of only a certain number of pages and he quickly brings the threads together in a knot. I kind of guessed how it would end and it slightly irritated me. It seemed that the author might have taken some shortcuts.

I will likely read more from the author. He writes a suspenseful police thriller, just needs a teensy bit of smoothing out. Don't want to say polish, that's what James Patterson does after a team writes the book and he puts the 'star polish' on it. Blech.