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Burn Factor: A Pulse-Pounding Standalone FBI Thriller of Conspiracy, Murder, and Deadly Secrets
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Vince Flynn
Bright, young, and ambitious, Quinn Barry desperately wants to be an FBI agent, even as she programs databases in the basement of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. But Quinn's career -- and her life -- are about to change wildly. Testing a new program, Quinn's computer savvy turns up a mysterious DNA link among five gruesome murders. A link that the old FBI system had been carefully programmed to miss. A link that nearly costs Quinn her job, and soon, her life...Pitted against a conspiracy of unimaginable proportions, Quinn will match wits against powerful government forces that will use any means necessary to keep their dirty secrets hidden -- secrets that will land her in the clutches of a sadistic, brilliant madman who holds the key to it all.
Bright, young, and ambitious, Quinn Barry desperately wants to be an FBI agent, even as she programs databases in the basement of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. But Quinn's career -- and her life -- are about to change wildly. Testing a new program, Quinn's computer savvy turns up a mysterious DNA link among five gruesome murders. A link that the old FBI system had been carefully programmed to miss. A link that nearly costs Quinn her job, and soon, her life...Pitted against a conspiracy of unimaginable proportions, Quinn will match wits against powerful government forces that will use any means necessary to keep their dirty secrets hidden -- secrets that will land her in the clutches of a sadistic, brilliant madman who holds the key to it all.
580 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 3, 2001
230 people are currently reading
568 people want to read
About the author
Kyle Mills
33 books2,536 followersI grew up in Oregon but have lived all over—D.C., Virginia, Maryland, London,
Wyoming. My father was an FBI agent and I was a bureau kid, which is similar to being an army brat. You tend to spend your time with other bureau kids and get transferred around a lot, though, I fared better on that front than many others.
One positive aspect of this lifestyle is that you can’t help but absorb an enormous amount about the FBI, CIA, Special Forces, etc. Like most young boys, I was endlessly fascinated with talk of chasing criminals and, of course, pictured it in the most romantic terms possible. Who would have thought that all this esoteric knowledge would end up being so useful?
I came into writing from kind of a strange angle. When I graduated from college in the late eighties, I had the same dream as everyone else at the time—a corporate job, a nice car, and a house with lots of square footage.
It turns out that none of that really suited me. While I did go for the corporate job, I
drove a beat-up Jeep and lived in a tiny house in a so-so Baltimore neighborhood. Most of the money I made just kind of accumulated in my checking account and I found myself increasingly drawn to the unconventional, artistic people who lived around me. I was completely enamored with anyone who could create something from nothing because I felt like it was beyond me.
Enter rock climbing. I’d read an article on climbing when I was in college and thought it looked like an incredible thing to do. Someday, I told myself, I would give it a try. So one weekend in the early ’90s, I packed up my car, drove to West Virginia, and spent a
weekend taking lessons. Unknown to me at the time, this would be the start of an
obsession that still hangs with me today. I began dating a girl who liked to climb and we decided we wanted to live somewhere with taller rocks and more open space.
Moving to Wyoming was the best decision we ever made. The place is full of the most amazing people. You might meet someone on a bike ride and find out they were in the Olympics, or climbed Everest, or just got back from two months trekking in Nepal. In a roundabout way, it was these people who made it possible for me to write a novel. They seemed to have no limitations. Everything was possible for them and I wanted to be that type of person, too.
I was working for a little bank in Jackson Hole, spending my days making business loans and my afternoons and weekends climbing. For some reason, it finally occurred to me that I’d never actually tried to be creative. Maybe I could make something from nothing. Why not give it a shot?
My first bright idea was to learn to build furniture. That plan had some drawbacks, the most obvious of which being that I’m not very handy. It was my wife who suggested I write a novel. It seemed like a dumb idea, though, since I majored in finance and had spent my entire college career avoiding English courses like the plague. Having said that, I couldn’t completely shake the idea. Eventually, it nagged at me long enough that I felt compelled to put pen to paper. Eight months later, I finished Rising Phoenix and about a year after that I managed to get it published.
The success of Rising Phoenix and my subsequent books has allowed me to make my living as a writer, which isn’t bad work if you can get it. Other than that, my life hasn’t changed all that much. Aging elbows have forced me to replace climbing with backcountry skiing and mountain bike racing. I got the not-so-smart idea of restoring an old pickup to replace the dying Jeep. And, I still live in Wyoming...
Wyoming. My father was an FBI agent and I was a bureau kid, which is similar to being an army brat. You tend to spend your time with other bureau kids and get transferred around a lot, though, I fared better on that front than many others.
One positive aspect of this lifestyle is that you can’t help but absorb an enormous amount about the FBI, CIA, Special Forces, etc. Like most young boys, I was endlessly fascinated with talk of chasing criminals and, of course, pictured it in the most romantic terms possible. Who would have thought that all this esoteric knowledge would end up being so useful?
I came into writing from kind of a strange angle. When I graduated from college in the late eighties, I had the same dream as everyone else at the time—a corporate job, a nice car, and a house with lots of square footage.
It turns out that none of that really suited me. While I did go for the corporate job, I
drove a beat-up Jeep and lived in a tiny house in a so-so Baltimore neighborhood. Most of the money I made just kind of accumulated in my checking account and I found myself increasingly drawn to the unconventional, artistic people who lived around me. I was completely enamored with anyone who could create something from nothing because I felt like it was beyond me.
Enter rock climbing. I’d read an article on climbing when I was in college and thought it looked like an incredible thing to do. Someday, I told myself, I would give it a try. So one weekend in the early ’90s, I packed up my car, drove to West Virginia, and spent a
weekend taking lessons. Unknown to me at the time, this would be the start of an
obsession that still hangs with me today. I began dating a girl who liked to climb and we decided we wanted to live somewhere with taller rocks and more open space.
Moving to Wyoming was the best decision we ever made. The place is full of the most amazing people. You might meet someone on a bike ride and find out they were in the Olympics, or climbed Everest, or just got back from two months trekking in Nepal. In a roundabout way, it was these people who made it possible for me to write a novel. They seemed to have no limitations. Everything was possible for them and I wanted to be that type of person, too.
I was working for a little bank in Jackson Hole, spending my days making business loans and my afternoons and weekends climbing. For some reason, it finally occurred to me that I’d never actually tried to be creative. Maybe I could make something from nothing. Why not give it a shot?
My first bright idea was to learn to build furniture. That plan had some drawbacks, the most obvious of which being that I’m not very handy. It was my wife who suggested I write a novel. It seemed like a dumb idea, though, since I majored in finance and had spent my entire college career avoiding English courses like the plague. Having said that, I couldn’t completely shake the idea. Eventually, it nagged at me long enough that I felt compelled to put pen to paper. Eight months later, I finished Rising Phoenix and about a year after that I managed to get it published.
The success of Rising Phoenix and my subsequent books has allowed me to make my living as a writer, which isn’t bad work if you can get it. Other than that, my life hasn’t changed all that much. Aging elbows have forced me to replace climbing with backcountry skiing and mountain bike racing. I got the not-so-smart idea of restoring an old pickup to replace the dying Jeep. And, I still live in Wyoming...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 109 reviews
September 27, 2019
2.5 stars. This one is tough to rate because I liked parts of it quite a lot and other parts not at all. The protagonist, Quinn, is a young computer programmer working for the FBI. As a retired computer programmer myself, I enjoyed the first part of the book when she was working on re-writing a software program. And I enjoyed her friendship with the young good-hearted genius Eric. But the serial killer that the story centers on was one SICK puppy; and the gruesome, detailed scenes of how he tortured his (always young, attractive female) victims were very hard to read. To me they were unnecessarily graphic and gory, and I've read some pretty dark stuff over the years. This was really stomach-turning, especially when he tortures and kills a man's teenage daughter right in front of him. Just too depraved for me! Perhaps I am getting "soft" as I get older. Also, one small detail stood out for me. At one point the author mentioned the killer choosing his victims from photos of "little girls". These were photos attached to college applications, fergoshsakes! These were not "little girls" but young women. I found that choice of words terribly old-fashioned and sexist. Although the story was a very suspenseful page-turner, I won't be seeking out more from this author.
September 16, 2018
Not really sure how I feel about this. The story line is interesting. What happens when a programmer finds a number of crimes linked by DNA that are specifically programmed not to show up in a DNA matching routine. The problem I had with the story was the graphic descriptions of the crimes. I just couldn't get past that. I found myself dreading reading the next chapter, knowing there would be a murder. And the ending is a bit of a cliff hanger, how does the main character, Quinn, get back to her "normal" life? Does she have a job? How are all the deaths explained to the public?
I really want to like Kyle Mills writing as Vince Flynn's family is having him continue the Mitch Rapp series, but I am apprehensive as I did not really like this or The Second Horseman.
I really want to like Kyle Mills writing as Vince Flynn's family is having him continue the Mitch Rapp series, but I am apprehensive as I did not really like this or The Second Horseman.
October 11, 2009
Another entertaining and easy to read book, better than some of this others, but still irritating to an extent, and full of characters that I probably wouldn't choose to associate with in my own life. It was fairly predictable and not a book that I would recommend to anyone else.
December 10, 2012
If you want an unrealistic plot with sadistic, disgusting, unnecessary violence...this book is for you.
February 6, 2017
Mills is a decent enough writer, other than the over-use of characters' names in conversation. In one two-page conversation, one of the characters says the other character's name NINE times. Read that out loud -- NOBODY talks that way. It's annoying and distracting. I don't understand why authors do this and editors let them.
I had problems with the plot. Here's a woman smart enough to outwit the FBI and the CIA, yet she falls for some random voice on the phone? I don't think so.
The hero and heroine are on the run, yet they stay at a series of hotels. How are they paying for that? They just happened to have literally hundreds of dollars in cash on them? At one point, they make 78 phone calls on a pay phone. Again, who is walking around with 78 quarters in their pockets while on the run?
The hero and heroine have boxes of evidence with them in a hotel. They load it all up in the car, and then, abandon the car during a car chase. Yet, at the end of the chase when they are in someone else's car, they have all the evidence. Did they go back for it? Have it delivered? What?
These seem like a little things, but they interrupt the flow of the story while you try to work out how these could be accomplished.
The last 60 - 80 pages is redundant. It's not suspenseful - it's ridiculous. How many times does the bad guy get resurrected? Too many. Again, bad guy on the run, but I lost count of the people he had time to serially kill along the way.
Unless you're really not bothered by a string of plot points that don't add up, I'd suggest reading this only if you're bored and have nothing else to read. Otherwise, forget it.
I had problems with the plot. Here's a woman smart enough to outwit the FBI and the CIA, yet she falls for some random voice on the phone? I don't think so.
The hero and heroine are on the run, yet they stay at a series of hotels. How are they paying for that? They just happened to have literally hundreds of dollars in cash on them? At one point, they make 78 phone calls on a pay phone. Again, who is walking around with 78 quarters in their pockets while on the run?
The hero and heroine have boxes of evidence with them in a hotel. They load it all up in the car, and then, abandon the car during a car chase. Yet, at the end of the chase when they are in someone else's car, they have all the evidence. Did they go back for it? Have it delivered? What?
These seem like a little things, but they interrupt the flow of the story while you try to work out how these could be accomplished.
The last 60 - 80 pages is redundant. It's not suspenseful - it's ridiculous. How many times does the bad guy get resurrected? Too many. Again, bad guy on the run, but I lost count of the people he had time to serially kill along the way.
Unless you're really not bothered by a string of plot points that don't add up, I'd suggest reading this only if you're bored and have nothing else to read. Otherwise, forget it.
March 25, 2019
3.5 stars. The prologue contains cryptic scenes. As the team goes into the house in the early morning hours, I thought the police might be executing a search warrant. Then when the woman's body was seen, I thought they were processing a crime scene. When the body was wrapped in plastic and removed, it seemed like they were sanitizing the place. Lots of confusing thoughts swirled in my mind and I'm only on page 7.
Quinn Barry works at computer support for the FBI. She aspires to be an FBI agent. She developed a computer program that produced 5 hits that had never been identified before. She can't figure out why DNA had never matched up and connected these 5 murders. Quinn is suddenly reassigned and that's a puzzle too. She requests the 5 files and discovers someone is committing horrible murders that are going undetected..... or being swept under the rug. Quinn teams up with a genius young physicist.
In this book from 2001, the killer's identity is revealed before the halfway point of the book but the reason this is all happening remains the mystery. I like serial killer stories and this one had a different alliance to it. The crime scenes are gruesome so don't read the book if you are squeamish.
Quinn Barry works at computer support for the FBI. She aspires to be an FBI agent. She developed a computer program that produced 5 hits that had never been identified before. She can't figure out why DNA had never matched up and connected these 5 murders. Quinn is suddenly reassigned and that's a puzzle too. She requests the 5 files and discovers someone is committing horrible murders that are going undetected..... or being swept under the rug. Quinn teams up with a genius young physicist.
In this book from 2001, the killer's identity is revealed before the halfway point of the book but the reason this is all happening remains the mystery. I like serial killer stories and this one had a different alliance to it. The crime scenes are gruesome so don't read the book if you are squeamish.
March 25, 2009
Although chilling and realistic, this book is seriously sick...no one in their right minds should be able to write this or enjoy reading it.
It was well written and all of that but the story is a little much.
It was well written and all of that but the story is a little much.
July 19, 2015
I really disliked this book. It is a stinker. I'm not sure why I finished it, other than I hate not finishing a book. If you haven't already read it, I recommend skipping it.
November 21, 2024
I like Kyle Mills as a writer and I liked the protagonist here, Quinn Barry was an appealing character, easy to like. I have to agree with other reviewers that the violence was excessive and borderline gratuitous, especially the death of Gen. Price’s teenaged daughter. The was unnecessary and didn’t advance the plot. My own books have violence - in many genres it’s necessary to the story. But readers have an imagination, there is no reason to include the level of descriptive detail found here. The ending seemed contrived as well.
April 2, 2017
Kyle Mills is awesome. All I will say is read this book...
September 24, 2010
I've never seen a killer take so long to be killed! I couldn't stand the finding of another victim and skipped over the descriptions of the murders.Burn Factor is big on illogical plot twists, and small on characterizations. We never learn enough about Quinn to understand why she puts her career (not to mention her life) in jeopardy. Not for the faint of heart (ME!)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 4, 2008
This was a perfect book for a 17 hour plane ride. It was a nice piece of cheesy fiction that didn't require a lot of thinking or careful study. I picked it up for .50 cents at a book sale with the purpose of traveling with it and leaving it behind. That is exactly what I did.
November 12, 2015
Not very impressed with this book.
March 17, 2017
Poor
The 'good guys' are all stupid! Read to page 210, can't go on.
The 'good guys' are all stupid! Read to page 210, can't go on.
March 9, 2023
SUBJECTIVE READER REVIEW WITH PLOT SPOILERS FOLLOWS:
It's almost guaranteed that the earliest books authors write, before they became famous and had a staff doing the difficult stuff, will be their best, and 'Burn Factor' is no different. I'd rate this book right up there with the best mystery thrillers I've ever read! This early book syndrome is based in the fact that early on authors have to rely solely on their creative instincts to make a book work. I will forever say that Nelson DeMille's first eight books were of such quality that I saluted him as the Author Laureate of American adventure writers. But I digress.
Since I'm a period writer, with my novels based in the Cold War during the Reagan years, it's no surprise that the storyline of 'Burn Factor' would appeal to me. West Virginia bumpkin Quinn Barry wants to leave her home state so badly she ends up as a new hire at the Hoover Building. Now that's no place for a neophyte to land, but she did, and her boss gave her a seemingly duplicative job of checking the programming code in the CODIS database, which was being performed by contractors from Advanced Thermal Dynamics. When she finished the code verification her test run showed five extra hits than planned across the fifty states in the test. Little could she have known she'd stumbled across the biggest coverup in American history!
When her supervisor Louis Crater stopped berating her enough to issue guidance, he reassigned her to the FBI's large campus at Quantico which she quickly mastered enough to take an interest in why the test run found five DNA cases not included in CODIS and they were all the same DNA signature. When she tried to pull them up in the system to review them she got five overnight FedEx packages the next day; the murder cases from the five hits across the US with the same DNA. The attempts on her life soon followed as she made contact with a suspect, Eric Twain, in the first case she dove into. In a bitter twist of fate, Eric Twain had been in love with Lisa Egan and the cops tried to frame him for it.
Eric's a child genius who got his Doctorate at nineteen and has made a living from intermittent jobs only a nuclear physicist could complete. The attempts on Quinn's life continue as Eric becomes her partner in survival. Not even knowing who's after them, Quinn asks her CIA officer courter for help, only to have him killed on the Beltway. After exhausting all possible threads, they finally learn that a company called Advanced Thermal Dynamics seems to be after them, then Eric admits he's done post-Doctorate level mathematic solutions for them previously but can't make sense of the attacks.
They eventually learn the head of ATD is retired General Richard Price, who's last job in the military was head of the Ballistic Missile Defense Office, the execution arm of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. Although officially discontinued in the 1990s, Price saw BMDO as a possible checkmate against rogue state's launching ballistic missiles and brought together the political and scientific capital to secretly pursue SDI and was very near the completion point when Quinn Barry began nosing around.
Richard Price had the political connections to obtain all the black money necessary to build Advanced Thermal Dynamics but lacked the Einstein genius of solving the physics issues associated with making an orbit-safe, nuclear fusion satellite-based laser, so he made the ultimate deal with the devil. Edward Marin was perhaps the only living man on par with Einstein's depth of uber-human creativity who could solve the insoluble. Unfortunately, he was very high maintenance uber-human creativity, as his only thrill in life was the slow torture, sexual assault and murder of young, professional, fit and beautiful women. When Quinn showed up innocently on the case, Price's goons had cleaned up thirty-two such savagely insane murder scenes. ATD was only months away from delivering on SDI with a workable prototype.
Okay folks, I've given you the storyline, so if it's interesting to you, then you're gonna have to read 'Burn Factor' and find out how demented Edward Marin really was. If you like mystery thrillers, this book is made for you, I promise. Get it, read it and enjoy it.
It's almost guaranteed that the earliest books authors write, before they became famous and had a staff doing the difficult stuff, will be their best, and 'Burn Factor' is no different. I'd rate this book right up there with the best mystery thrillers I've ever read! This early book syndrome is based in the fact that early on authors have to rely solely on their creative instincts to make a book work. I will forever say that Nelson DeMille's first eight books were of such quality that I saluted him as the Author Laureate of American adventure writers. But I digress.
Since I'm a period writer, with my novels based in the Cold War during the Reagan years, it's no surprise that the storyline of 'Burn Factor' would appeal to me. West Virginia bumpkin Quinn Barry wants to leave her home state so badly she ends up as a new hire at the Hoover Building. Now that's no place for a neophyte to land, but she did, and her boss gave her a seemingly duplicative job of checking the programming code in the CODIS database, which was being performed by contractors from Advanced Thermal Dynamics. When she finished the code verification her test run showed five extra hits than planned across the fifty states in the test. Little could she have known she'd stumbled across the biggest coverup in American history!
When her supervisor Louis Crater stopped berating her enough to issue guidance, he reassigned her to the FBI's large campus at Quantico which she quickly mastered enough to take an interest in why the test run found five DNA cases not included in CODIS and they were all the same DNA signature. When she tried to pull them up in the system to review them she got five overnight FedEx packages the next day; the murder cases from the five hits across the US with the same DNA. The attempts on her life soon followed as she made contact with a suspect, Eric Twain, in the first case she dove into. In a bitter twist of fate, Eric Twain had been in love with Lisa Egan and the cops tried to frame him for it.
Eric's a child genius who got his Doctorate at nineteen and has made a living from intermittent jobs only a nuclear physicist could complete. The attempts on Quinn's life continue as Eric becomes her partner in survival. Not even knowing who's after them, Quinn asks her CIA officer courter for help, only to have him killed on the Beltway. After exhausting all possible threads, they finally learn that a company called Advanced Thermal Dynamics seems to be after them, then Eric admits he's done post-Doctorate level mathematic solutions for them previously but can't make sense of the attacks.
They eventually learn the head of ATD is retired General Richard Price, who's last job in the military was head of the Ballistic Missile Defense Office, the execution arm of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. Although officially discontinued in the 1990s, Price saw BMDO as a possible checkmate against rogue state's launching ballistic missiles and brought together the political and scientific capital to secretly pursue SDI and was very near the completion point when Quinn Barry began nosing around.
Richard Price had the political connections to obtain all the black money necessary to build Advanced Thermal Dynamics but lacked the Einstein genius of solving the physics issues associated with making an orbit-safe, nuclear fusion satellite-based laser, so he made the ultimate deal with the devil. Edward Marin was perhaps the only living man on par with Einstein's depth of uber-human creativity who could solve the insoluble. Unfortunately, he was very high maintenance uber-human creativity, as his only thrill in life was the slow torture, sexual assault and murder of young, professional, fit and beautiful women. When Quinn showed up innocently on the case, Price's goons had cleaned up thirty-two such savagely insane murder scenes. ATD was only months away from delivering on SDI with a workable prototype.
Okay folks, I've given you the storyline, so if it's interesting to you, then you're gonna have to read 'Burn Factor' and find out how demented Edward Marin really was. If you like mystery thrillers, this book is made for you, I promise. Get it, read it and enjoy it.
April 25, 2022
Реалната ми оценка е малко над 3 звезди. Книгата е добра без да претендира да е нещо УаУ. Историята е интересна и увлекателна, а екшъна е нон-стоп.
Куйн Бари е амбициозна млада жена, която работи като програмист във ФБР, а мечтата и е един ден да стане истински федерален агент. Възложена и е задача да тества нова компютърната програма за съвпадение на ДНК в базата данни на ФБР. Дотук нищо интерестно, само че нейният модел открива 5 странни съвпадения, които предишната програма на ФБР не е идентифицирала досега..Съвпаденията на ДНК са свързани с 5 жестоки убийства на млади и привлекателни жени(като Куйн), а случаите изглеждат умишлено прикрити от ФБР. Ужасена от бруталните убийства, Куйн започва свое собствено разследване, тръгвайки по следите на бруталният садистичен убиец. Преследвана от тайна правителствена организация тя е принудена да обедини сили с главния заподозрян, брилянтният физик Ерик Туейв.
Историята имаше потенциал да се превърне в невероятен трилър, но за съжаление самоличността на убиеца се разкрива твърде рано. От там насетне проследяваме ходовете на добрите Куйн и Ерик(които разбира се са излишно захаросани и мотивите им защо излагат живота си на риск не са достатъчно ясни!?), на лошите – тайната правителствена организация, която не желае действията на убиеца да стават обществено достояние и на самият убиец – брилянтен учен, но садистичен психопат (който обаче не блести достатъчно със собствена индивидуалност, като например Ханибал Лектър).
Последните 50-60 страници са наситени с излишен екшън, където самият уж гениален убиец иска да контролира положението и да си безчинства на воля, но прави изключително нелогични неща за да бъде спрян.
Много ми допадат историите за серийни убийци, тази също ми хареса, но имаше твърде много недоразумения в сюжета, за да дам по висока оценка.
Куйн Бари е амбициозна млада жена, която работи като програмист във ФБР, а мечтата и е един ден да стане истински федерален агент. Възложена и е задача да тества нова компютърната програма за съвпадение на ДНК в базата данни на ФБР. Дотук нищо интерестно, само че нейният модел открива 5 странни съвпадения, които предишната програма на ФБР не е идентифицирала досега..Съвпаденията на ДНК са свързани с 5 жестоки убийства на млади и привлекателни жени(като Куйн), а случаите изглеждат умишлено прикрити от ФБР. Ужасена от бруталните убийства, Куйн започва свое собствено разследване, тръгвайки по следите на бруталният садистичен убиец. Преследвана от тайна правителствена организация тя е принудена да обедини сили с главния заподозрян, брилянтният физик Ерик Туейв.
Историята имаше потенциал да се превърне в невероятен трилър, но за съжаление самоличността на убиеца се разкрива твърде рано. От там насетне проследяваме ходовете на добрите Куйн и Ерик(които разбира се са излишно захаросани и мотивите им защо излагат живота си на риск не са достатъчно ясни!?), на лошите – тайната правителствена организация, която не желае действията на убиеца да стават обществено достояние и на самият убиец – брилянтен учен, но садистичен психопат (който обаче не блести достатъчно със собствена индивидуалност, като например Ханибал Лектър).
Последните 50-60 страници са наситени с излишен екшън, където самият уж гениален убиец иска да контролира положението и да си безчинства на воля, но прави изключително нелогични неща за да бъде спрян.
Много ми допадат историите за серийни убийци, тази също ми хареса, но имаше твърде много недоразумения в сюжета, за да дам по висока оценка.
October 25, 2018
It's been years since I last read a Kyle Mills book, but he was a go-to read nearly 15 years ago. When he took over the Mitch Rapp series after the death of Vince Flynn, I thought I should go back and pick things up where I left off. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it seems my tastes may have changed since I left off reading his books.
This book focused (unexpectedly, I admit) on a serial killer in the employ of the US military machine, protected because of his genius. Elements of the book were too graphic for my tastes and outside of the expectations I had of someone I remembered writing more straightforward thrillers. Overall, an action packed book, but gratuitous at times and obviously from a time when Mills was still finding his voice as an author.
I'll probably dip my toe into Mills catalog again in the future, especially since I think he's done an admirable job with Mitch Rapp. However, I may remember him more fondly for taking over a series than his own work if the next book follows suit of this one.
This book focused (unexpectedly, I admit) on a serial killer in the employ of the US military machine, protected because of his genius. Elements of the book were too graphic for my tastes and outside of the expectations I had of someone I remembered writing more straightforward thrillers. Overall, an action packed book, but gratuitous at times and obviously from a time when Mills was still finding his voice as an author.
I'll probably dip my toe into Mills catalog again in the future, especially since I think he's done an admirable job with Mitch Rapp. However, I may remember him more fondly for taking over a series than his own work if the next book follows suit of this one.
January 9, 2018
The potential was there for this to be a great suspense thriller but it fell flat about half way through. The killer is revealed early on in a rather anti-climactic way. From there we are supposed to then try and figure out the why the killer is able to do what he does but I had pretty much figured that out before the killer’s identity was revealed. The rest of the book follows the hero and heroine on the run and follows the killer with descriptions of his murders of numerous women. I could understand one or two descriptions for a little insight into the killer’s mind but the amount of detailed accounts of his many sadistic murders is a bit disturbing. The extra time given to those would have been better served for a more resolved ending for the hero and heroine as their story ends rather abruptly leaving many questions.
May 24, 2020
Kinda loved it. Just that there wasn't much of a mystery as expected. Its pretty predictable. There is one major mystery which is revealed half way through and after that its just hovering around. Nevertheless the writing is amazing and it was almost impossible to put it down. There is some pretty gruesome violence (sexual) involved so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone but if you think you can handle it just go for it. The fact that the violence is the main highlight of the story is a little irritating coz other than that there's nothing much exceptional in this novel
August 7, 2025
Gruesome
Hard to believe Kyle Mills wrote this book. Cannot believe this is the same guy who wrote the Mitch Rapp series. A gruesome story. The killing is a little over the top. I didn’t get the point of protecting a serial killer until several chapters in. I would have liked more of a back story of psycho killer Dr Edward Marin, much like the suspected killer Eric Twain. The why. The heroine wants-to-be-FBI Agent Quinn Barry was a good character. The end was also lacking. It ends with meeting FBI Mark Beaman? That’s it? It’s still a good story.
Hard to believe Kyle Mills wrote this book. Cannot believe this is the same guy who wrote the Mitch Rapp series. A gruesome story. The killing is a little over the top. I didn’t get the point of protecting a serial killer until several chapters in. I would have liked more of a back story of psycho killer Dr Edward Marin, much like the suspected killer Eric Twain. The why. The heroine wants-to-be-FBI Agent Quinn Barry was a good character. The end was also lacking. It ends with meeting FBI Mark Beaman? That’s it? It’s still a good story.
November 25, 2022
I have read Kyle's Mitch Rapp books and enjoyed them. This one, I quit after about a quarter of the way through. Not Mills' best work by a long shot. The plot has large holes in it that are obvious to anyone who reads in this genre, and the characters are not believable or well developed. It just comes off as amateurish. It's rare that I stop reading without finishing a book - but this one felt like a waste of time almost immediately.
October 7, 2021
I do not usually read serial murder books. In fact, I found parts quite disturbing. However, it is professionally written, the plot structure is well thought out and it is indeed a thriller. I hope his other books are more in the spy genre, because I will not be able to read too many of these books before I get seriously depressed.
March 1, 2018
Not my first from this author. I have read his Covert-One series and enjoyed it.
Burn Factor is not for the squeamish. Some of the details are too graphic. It has a sick killer that preys on women.
Quinn Barry is an interesting character. I would love to read more of her.
Burn Factor is not for the squeamish. Some of the details are too graphic. It has a sick killer that preys on women.
Quinn Barry is an interesting character. I would love to read more of her.
March 21, 2018
Thriller for sure
Way back in his career, this. showed the beginnings of the greatness we see today. I read the Mitch Rap series; this my first look of his other works. Will be reading more.
Way back in his career, this. showed the beginnings of the greatness we see today. I read the Mitch Rap series; this my first look of his other works. Will be reading more.
February 4, 2021
Sure it's a first
Kyle Mills proves his worth here. An engaging story that gives depth to the characters in the beginning and then unravels to an excellent end piece. Worth the read.
Kyle Mills proves his worth here. An engaging story that gives depth to the characters in the beginning and then unravels to an excellent end piece. Worth the read.
August 29, 2021
The beginning was great, and it promised to be a good read. Then it got dumb, silly and long with unrealistic dialogue and stupid passages with incredibly boring writing bordering on fantasy. I'll never read another Mills' book. YUK!
April 13, 2022
A very good psychological thriller with none stop action. Wasn’t what I expected from Kyle Mills after having read all of the Mitch Rapp novels. However, I wasn’t disappointed, not for the faint of heart.
October 11, 2023
Wow! A very suspenseful and full of twists and turns. In this book, the government is covering up a serial killer but why you ask, read on and get cozy. Kyle Miles ia another author I will be adding to my must reads!
Happy Reading:)
Happy Reading:)
May 4, 2017
Read 30% and returned it; not of interest to me. Will not read any more books by this author.
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