Shaken by JA Konrath Review

Title: Shaken (Jack Daniels Mystery #7)

Author: J.A. Konrath

Genre: Mystery, Crime

Page Count: 304 Pages/675 KB

Book Type: Kindle

Publisher: AmazonEncore

ISBN: 0781035597213

AISN: B003M69XAM

Picture from Amazon

Warning, spoilers from the previous...

From Goodreads: Chicago cop Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels has chased, and caught, dozens of dangerous criminals over the course of her career. But she's about to meet her match.

When Jack wakes up in a storage locker, bound and gagged, she knows with chilling certainty who her abductor is.

He's called "Mr. K." More than two hundred homicides have been attributed to him. His victims have died in the most horrible ways imaginable. He's the essence of evil. Some think he's just an urban legend. But he's real. Jack has tangled with him twice in the past, and both times he managed to slip away.

Now Jack will finally have a chance to confront the maniac she's been hunting for over twenty-five years. Unfortunately, it won't be on her terms. In less than two hours, Mr. K is going to do to Jack what he's done to countless others. And Jack is going to learn that sometimes the good guys don't win...

My Review: I always like the covers of these books. All of the covers and titles reference drinks to go along with the main character, Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels. It’s funny that this series was one of the ones that got me to read again. I read the first one and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone both in a few days while on vacation. They really couldn’t be any more different.

You can find my review for the 5th Jack Daniels book, Fuzzy Navel, here. In the Kindle version of Shaken, you can either read the book in chronological order or the order in which Konrath wrote it which uses flashbacks. I chose to read this the way Konrath intended.

I really liked getting the chance to go back in time and see the start of Jack’s partnership with Herb. They have one of the best camaraderies in the book world. I love how we can see how this developed over the years. 

This one seemed to be a bit more serious than the previous ones since Jack was kidnapped. I usually prefer the comic relief of Herb and Harry, which did exist, but wasn’t as highlighted in Shaken. This one was an emotional roller coaster. They question the origins of good and evil throughout the novel and it really makes you think. Jack questions what exactly evil is, if evil even exists at all.   

The good thing about all of the flashbacks in this one is that I really think this could work as a standalone novel as well as part of the series. Although it isn’t my favorite of the series, I would say that first time readers could still give it a shot! 

Are you willing to give this series a chance?