Review: Once Gone

Once Gone by Blake Pierce
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Snatched this ebook up for free, twice, not realizing I already had it, informed by the email newsletter from Bookbub and The Fussy Librarian.
While the case is interesting with the serial killer, Riley is as bad as it gets for a divorced, single mother heroine as an FBI-Agent. The problems with the last case (happening off-page but used in flashbacks) paint her as a rather good profiler, who has gone off the rails and continues to repeat her mistakes again and again, something I cannot stand, making a mistake once is ok, but one should learn from it. Her partner is rather dumb, enabling her making her mistakes, again, once would be acceptable, but twice or if you count different situations even more.
Riley constantly goes places and situations alone, even when it is not warranted or even standard procedure. What she does should get her fired from the FBI forever and most probably thrown in prison. In one situation she endangers the case in a way which, had that been the Killer, would assure that he would walk free if brought to court. Not wanting to spoil it, I will not go into details, but this is not necessary for a good thriller, and I would rather like some straight FBI-Agent solve her or his cases with following procedure and working in a group.
Case in point, the last book I read before this one, built a situation where the heroine was finally alone with the killer in a way which had them (herself and her colleagues) later question themselves wether they could have prevented that - but admitted that they followed protocol and that the heroine gave a direct order as a superior to leave her, thinking she was save with a supposed witness who led her in a trap.
So, it is not needed to overstep borders or disobey rules to built suspense.

As I am near the end, DNF is no use, but I will certainly not recommend it, but warn against it, and not read the second book, which I also got for free - lucky me, no wasted money on these two. Icing on the cake is for that the title and cover have nothing whatsoever to do with the story.

Shame really, the writing is otherwise ok, but I hate it when people are acting like this and do not learn from their mistakes and repeat them.
So, now that I am finished, reluctantly as the idea is ok, and the writing otherwhise sound, 2 stars it is, not recommended. Will glance in his other (free) books I own, but this is most probably not an author to watch for.
Topped is this with the Killer and Riley having a showdown I feared coming almost since the first page, and which I loathe as much in this book as in others where no justice is served.
It would have been a nice surprise if that had played out differently.

In the ending on the last page there is a nice twisty cliffhanger to make me want to read the next book. But even that was not a real surprise. Yawn.


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