As a story, you can say that the Shadow Hunter by Michael Prescott starts out with a very disturbing and real since it’s about stalking someone. The story seems right out of the headlines when you meet Raymond Hinkle, a stalker, who is obsessed with a beautiful local TV news reporter named Kris Barwood.
The other part of the story is about Abby Sinclair, who works for an agency that protects people. In her last job, she was unable to protect an actor named Corbal, who was also shot by a female stalker outside a bar. It was tough for Abby to get over this but at the same time, the head of her agency felt that she was the best person to help Kris Barwood.
While the story does have a lot of action and suspense, my feeling was that there were some problems that made the story convoluted and difficult to believe. Yes, there are times that you can enjoy a story but certain parts of the story just distracted me because it made it less credible.
There was one scene early on where Hinkle was leaving messages for Kris Barwood. One of the messages was so disturbing that it was hard to believe that no action couldn’t be taken against Hinkle for leaving that type of message. If the author did not come on so strong with that message, I felt that the rest of the story could have been more credible but considering the fact that this was a threat against a TV News reporter, leaving messages of this type should have been enough to bring charges against a stalker like Hinkle.
The shifting viewpoint didn’t help the story either. I can understand if it’s done with major characters but it seemed to me that there were at least six different view points and it wasn’t consistent. Having viewpoints not only on Kris, her husband, Abby, and members of her team, didn’t do much for the story other than make it more disjointed.
Yes, there were some plot twists but of course, it took the story away from Hinkle and the issue of stalking. As a result, there wasn’t much of a plot or a mystery. With the shifting viewpoint, there were no surprises either.
While I do enjoy a lot of action and suspense in a story, I also would like to read a story that has a good plot and a compelling theme. The theme didn’t work well with the story and that’s the reason I can only give the book three stars.
Ron Hummer
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