Rating: 8 out of 10
Book Title: Split Second
Writer: Alex Kava
Publisher: Mira
Edition: 2001 (Hardcover)
ISBN #: 1-55166-835-1

Split Second is written by Alex Kava. Along with Split Second's dedication page there is a "Special Thanks to:" page -- technically pages, because it goes on for more than one page. It sounds like an Academy Award speech. Good Christ is this woman grateful.

I read Split Second after reading her debut book A Perfect Evil, which I found in the town dump. (This is not meant to be an insult. I find much of my reading material in the dump, and have found some great stuff.) I don't normally read the serial murderer genre, which her stuff is in, but A Perfect Evil had such a beautiful cover that I couldn't resist giving it a try. Both Kava books feature the beautiful and intelligent hero, Special Agent Maggie O'Dell, a criminal profiler for the FBI whose job it is to track down serial killers. I am emphasizing beautiful and intelligent because all the good characters in her books seem to be beautiful and intelligent. To be honest, the bad guys are also beautiful and intelligent (charming too) -- that's how they get away with murder so easily. The point is, there ain't too much gray area in the characters in her books. You're either good or bad. Your personality is predictable and fits neatly into simple categories.

By the way way, I am at liberty to inform you that Maggie doesn't get killed by her nemesis, the evil serial killer Albert Stucky. Why is this? Because the publisher has informed me before the very first page that I should watch for Agent Maggie O'Dell's next appearance coming August 2002.

Although Maggie deals with a different serial killer in A Perfect Evil, she is haunted and tortured by her previous dealings with the incredibly evil Stucky throughout the book. What bothered me so much about A Perfect Evil was that it was never really fully resolved. Towards the end of Split Second, there is a very overt hint that the saga of A Perfect Evil will continue in her upcoming novel. In the end of A Perfect Evil, Stucky escapes, setting the scene for Split Second. It's a cliff hanger. I wasn't about to pay for this type of commercial manipulation. I got my copy of Split Second from the library. Unlike A Perfect Evil, Split Second does get fully resolved, yet I felt slightly let down. Kava relies heavily on misdirection, as do many suspense writers. The idea is to lead you down paths which look legitimate but are really dead ends, and meant to draw your attention away from the more obvious and disturbing. This is fine so long as once the misdirection is revealed, it is truly shocking and you cannot find any flaws in the logic. I've seen a lot a writers do a lot worse than Kava with misdirection, but I have some problems with the logic of Split Second. Split Second is a better book than A Perfect Evil. It is not necessary to read A Perfect Evil before reading Split Second because there is so much fucking redundant information in A Perfect Evil about Maggie's character and her relationships.

I actually feel guilty about being so critical of Kava. Despite its problems, Split Second was an enjoyable read. Kava is superb at her craft. She knows how to maintain tension and she rarely ever gives you a chance to breathe. Both of her books contain one single chapter that is truly chilling and masterfully written. Kava has the God-given talent I believe to be the best of the best, but instead I belief she has opted for fluff.

If I were able to talk to Kava, and she said to me, if you think I could be the best of the best, how would I go about doing this? I would tell her, read Killer on the Road, by James Ellroy. It is about a serial killer much more terrifying and deranged than Stucky, yet somehow there is still a human quality to him. He is bad, very bad, but he is not evil. Evil is nothing but a religious abstraction, whether we like to admit it or not. If O'Dell is so intelligent, why does she compartmentalize everything as either good or evil? This is too simple. People in real life are really never purely good or purely evil. Read some of Ellroy's detective novels. They are filled with LA cops that are as criminal as the criminals they're after. Kava's FBI agents are portrayed like saints. Unlike a Kava novel, in an Ellroy novel you can never count on the protagonist to live to make it to the next novel.

After you've read Split Second, ask yourself why there was all that to-do about Maggie's mother acting weirdly and hanging out with strange people, yet nothing became of it. Weren't you expecting Stucky to be hanging out with her mother? Think about it. Wouldn't you expect Stucky to kill her mother, or at a minimum, take her hostage? This would be consistent with Stucky. Maybe this was the way Kava originally wrote it, yet for some reason the editor cut it out and yet left this puzzling weirdness in for some odd reason. Is this poor editing or is this some cheap way to set us up to buy Kava's third novel?