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    Hotwire
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    Hotwire
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    Hotwire
    Audiobook6 hours

    Hotwire

    Written by Alex Kava

    Narrated by Tanya Eby

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    In New York Times bestselling author Alex Kava's new thriller, Special Agent Maggie O'Dell investigates the death of three teenagers, only to find herself in the middle of a conspiracy involving biological warfare.

    On a crisp fall evening in western Nebraska, what started as a group of kids filming their drug-induced party ends in an explosive light show, leaving the victims apparently electrocuted, with odd scorch marks being the only evidence. While Maggie tries to make sense of the different stories, sifting through what is real and what is hallucination, she realizes that the surviving teens are being targeted and systematically eliminated.

    Meanwhile, on the East Coast, Army Colonel Benjamin Platt is at the scene of a deadly outbreak, desperate to identify the pathogen that has infected children at a Washington, D.C., elementary school. Despite the miles that separate them, the two cases collide as Maggie and Platt uncover secrets that were meant to stay hidden in the remote Midwest landscape.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJul 12, 2011
    ISBN9781441812940
    Unavailable
    Hotwire
    Author

    Alex Kava

    ALEX KAVA GREW UP IN THE COUNTRY outside Silver Creek, Nebraska. She earned a bachelor's degree in art and English from College of Saint Mary in Omaha, Nebraska.  She has done a variety of jobs, from working as a hospital tech, cleaning and sterilizing utensils from surgery, pathology and the morgue, to running her own graphic design firm, designing national food labels and directing television and radio commercials. IN 1996 SHE QUIT HER JOB as a public relations director to dedicate herself to writing a novel and getting published. To pay the bills, she refinanced her home, maxed out her credit cards and even took on a newspaper delivery route. TODAY, ALEX IS A NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHOR of psychological suspense novels.  Her Maggie O'Dell series, comprised of A Perfect Evil, Split Second, The Soul Catcher, At the Stroke of Madness, A Necessary Evil, Exposed and Black Friday along with her stand-alone novels, One False Move and Whitewash, have been widely praised by critics and fans. They have appeared on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists. Her books have been published in twenty-four countries and have hit the bestseller lists in Australia, Germany, Poland, Italy and the UK.  She is also one of the featured writers in the anthology Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night, edited by James Patterson. ONE FALSE MOVE WAS SELECTED AS Nebraska's 2006 One Book One Nebraska.  (My Antonia by Willa Cather was the 2005 selection).  In 2007 Alex was awarded the Mari Sandoz Award by the Nebraska Library Association. Whitewash made January Magazine's list of best thrillers for 2007. Exposed,Black Friday and 2011's DAMAGED received starred reviews by Publishers Weekly.   2010 marked Alex's ten year anniversary as an author with the publication of her tenth novel, Damaged (Doubleday, July 13th). HOTWIRE, her ninth Maggie O'Dell will be released July 12th, 2011. She also has co-authored two short stories in anthologies to be published in June and August: First Thrills, edited by Lee Child (After Dark, co-authored with Deb Carlin) and Florida Heat Wave, edited by Michael Lister (A Breath of Hot Air, co-authored with Patricia Bremmer is now on KINDLE. ALEX WRITES FULL-TIME AND LIVES IN Omaha, Nebraska and Pensacola, Florida (where her 2010 book, Damaged is set).  She is a member of International Thrillers Writers.    

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    Reviews for Hotwire

    3.5/5

    109 ratings28 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I truly enjoyed this book. It had been awhile sine I read a Maggie O'Dell but I immediately remembered why I love her. She kicks butt with the best of them. Both stories were believable and topics you could see actually being in national news. I couldn't put it down.
    • 4/5
      I got this book through one of the websites that offer "free" books. The thing is, I read so much that these free books sit on my table for a month or more after I get them. The same was true of another free book I got - Full Black by Brad Thor. When I read Full Black, I was pleasantly surprised at how good the story was and how well written. Especially for a first-time author. The same is true of Hot Wire. I've never read Alex Kava before but will be sure to put her on my "favorite authors" list. I always like to read the reviews by others before I write my own review. I don't agree with those reviewers that said there was no plot or interest. Nor do I agree with those that say the "mystery" wasn't satisfactorily wrapped up. I believe it's probably more than possible the government is running these types of programs and from reading other books, this isn't the first time I've read of bioweapons being produced by our government. And the fact that the government was one step ahead of them - not surprising. I also believe the ending was well written.Lessons learned: don't let "free" books sit so long. Really good writing and enjoyable reading awaits.
    • 5/5
      This book was so frightening that I had to stop reading it and wait until my husband came home to read more. This book began in a truly frightening manner. Cattle mutilations, drugged out teenagers being killed in a remote area of Nebraska...Agent Maggie O'Dell was on her game in this book. She had to overcome resistance from the local law enforcement, her boss back at Quantico and a worried Col Platt, who ended up having his own adventure. This book was hard to put down, once I wasn't scared. A few times, I thought I had it figured out, but then a new twist sent me in another directions. This is the type of mystery I love, just enough clues to let me think I know what's going to happen and then a quick change to throw me off. I felt the ending might have been a bit rushed. O'Dell throws herself off a cliff to escape death, but we're never told how bad her injuries are or even what they were. I wanted the ending to be a bit more discriptive. But I'm not complaining except for the fact that I now have to wait for the next Maggie O'Dell novel to be published.
    • 3/5
      Nice, face paced thriller that made for a quick and easy read. I didn't really get attached to the characters in the book from this first read, but have had previous experience with this series. Reading this as a standalone might have been a bit confusing from a character development perspective unless you have read other books in the series. Overall nicely done.
    • 4/5
      Hotwire is the 9th book in the Maggie O'Dell series. Maggie is an FBI agent who always seems to find trouble where ever she goes. Maggie is on her way to Denver to teach a class to law enforcement when she is temporarily redirected to western Nebraska to take a quick look into cattle mutilations. While there, they get an emergency call, some teenagers were attacked while they were partying and some were killed. Meanwhile, back east, Dr. Pratt is called in to help investigate possible intentional school lunch poisoning. Overall, a decent read. It kept you moving along and plenty of things happened. I got the feeling that the Dr. Pratt thing, while sort of tied in with what Maggie was doing was mostly to give him some screen time other than just phone calls between the 2 'sorta' love birds. I enjoyed it and I'll likely continue reading the series but I am not chewing at the bit to continue.
    • 4/5
      This book was filled with suspense and intrigue. It made me truly wonder about the source and safety of meat products everywhere. That said, I love the character of Maggie O'Dell and have read most of Alex Kava's books. I have watched her character develop (although this book is perfect as a stand alone too). I would also like to read more about Benjamin Platt in future novels. I would recommend this one!
    • 4/5
      I won this book from Goodreads.I haven't had the pleasure of reading any of the other books in the Maggie O'Dell series, but I did enjoy reading this one!This book reminded me of Patricia Cornwell's books with a female heroine. It encompasses two seemingly unconnected crimes, the first of which Maggie "stumbles" onto, while investigating cattle mutilation in the Nebraska forests. A group of kids were found, some injured, some dead, after a party they were having in a remote area. They had been experimenting with the drug Salvia and had described seeing flashing, shooting lights, much like fireworks, after taking the drug. All of a sudden, electric voltage ran through the air, killing two kids and injuring several others. Maggie happened to be in the area and becomes the lead investigator at this site. At the same time, in Virginia, Maggie's "friend Colonel Dr. Pratt was called in to investigate a second outbreak in that area, of school children falling violently ill after eating their school lunches. Everything is tied in together as a big cover-up of U.S. governmental secret operations. Maggie and Dr. Pratt solve thier prospective cases and bring about justice.This was a good book, one that I had trouble connecting the dots with until the last third of the book, when everything came together. I look forward to reading more books by this author.
    • 4/5
      Maggie O'Dell is investigating a case of mutilated cattle in Nebraska. Meanwhile a group of teenagers is partying out on government land when they are electrocuted. Back in Washington DC school children are getting sick and Maggie's friend Dr Benjamin Platt is called in to figure out why. This book certainly grabbed my attention in short order. What was going on? Government plot? Terrorism? Something worse? There were plenty of twists and turns along the way to where the two subplots converged. My only problem was the ending.. no spoilers here, but I felt the ending was rushed. That being said, if you are a fan of thrillers, I would say this is definitely recommended.
    • 5/5
      Hot Wire is in line with Damaged that came out before this book. Kava is an excellent writer and needs to go back to "what brought her here". She needs to get Maggie back going after serial killers.I liked the way that Kava moves from chapter to chapter changing the action. This way the reader has to keep reading to find out what happened.Kava can spin off from this book and write more in regards to this mystery warehouse. This could be done after she works on serial murder cases.Kava did good research for this book. She made the reader not want to live in Nebraska. She kept you guessing if the two cases were linked to the food problem. I did not unterstand why she spent time talking about chickens that could not lay, when the problem in the story was beef.
    • 4/5
      Agent Maggie O'Dell, F.B.I. profiler, has been sent to a conference in Colorado but has been called from it to investigate the case of mutilated cattle in Nebraska. Numerous cases have been found and all the cattle mutilated in exactly the same way. While on this case, she is also called in on the case of teens partying in the Nebraska National Forest. While tripping out on salvia, a group of teens reported flasing lights, seeing fireworks and the feeling of giant jolts of electricity. One of these jolts left teen, Dawson Hayes, in serious condition as he was nearly electrocuted from being thrown into an electrified fence. Maggie connects with Dawson and tries to get him to open up about what happened to him but someone else threatens to shut him up completely if he talks. He is convinced he saw glaring red eyes watching him just before his accident. Or, was it an accident? Several other teens did not survive the night. While the teens partied, UFO believer, Wesley Stotter, is busy chasing weird light patterns in the sky; more fodder for his aliens and anti-government radio show. Little does he know that his innate curiosity will not be good for his health. Someone does not want him snooping around in the forest.Back in Washington,D.C., Maggie's friend, Dr. Benjamin Platt, is asked by CDC chief, Roger Bix, to help him with widespread outbreaks of food poisoning in the elementary school. The strain of bacteria proves to be impervious to anti-biotics and Bix is convinced it is a case of domestic terrorism. Does it have anything to do with the cases in Nebraska? Who is protecting what becomes the running theme in all the cases. Whoever they are will do whatever it takes, including murder, to protect their secrets and themsleves.Hot Wire grabbed my attention right from the start; my mind was racing in all sorts of directions, at first, trying to figure out what was going on. Could it be aliens? UFO's? Big government? A few parts in the middle lagged a bit but once the cases were neatly tied together, the ending was satisfying. Buckle up because there are a lot of scary moments with a few nasty characters and lots of twists and turns. Although Hot Wire is the ninth in the Maggie O'Dell series, it can easily be read as a stand alone. I liked Maggie as a character; she's a dedicated professional with a strong work ethic and also a very caring individual. The character of Dr. Benjamin Pratt could have been developed a little more; he seemed a little flat to me in the story. Overall, I enjoyed the book and would definitely recommend it to thriller and/or conspiracy fans. 3.5***Disclosure: A review copy of the book was provided by Doubleday through LT's early reviewer program.
    • 3/5
      I am not quite sure how to review this book. This is the first Maggie O'Dell book I have read, and thought that the characterizations were a bit flat. Now that might have been because they have been fleshhed out more thoroughly in previous O'Dell books, and the author, Alex Kava did not find it necessary to do so again.Two plot threads, first, UFO/cattle mutilation, and second, biological warfare, the second being the better of the two. I'll give it 3 stars.
    • 4/5
      This is my first book by Alex Kava and I received it through the "Early Reviewers" program. Overall, I enjoyed the book, but felt a little cheated by the ending. Just thought it didn't go well with the story. I noticed a couple of other reviewers mentioned that as well. Maybe, if I started at the beginning of the series I might get a better feel for the characters, a sense of how the author approaches a story.
    • 4/5
      This was an enjoyable read. A fun thriller, but slightly underdeveloped. I enjoyed the main characters and the build up of the plot, but I felt that the culmination of the book was abrupt and not nearly as satisfying as I'd hoped for.
    • 4/5
      I got this book through LT Early Reviewer program. I have not ever read any Alex Kava books but the description reminded me of many series I have read. And now that I've read the book, I will be starting at the beginning of the series! The book was quite riveting, even when I was thinking it seemed more X-files than murder mystery. Of course, I also liked X-files. If you are a murder mystery fan, I highly recommend you check out this book and join me in reading the entire series.
    • 5/5
      Although I had recently finished reading Lee Childs's Worth Dying For -- also set in Nebraska, and equally bleak in premise and setting -- I found Hotwire to be an even better story. I'm not usually interested in tales of the alien/unexpected/weird/werewolf-y/whatever, but the electrocution of several teenagers at a drug party in the woods -- and the survivors' stories of otherworldly beings that might be hallucination or might be something close to fact -- sucked me in right away.The other plot -- which ends up meshing with the first -- has to do with food safety and lack thereof ... this part had me wanting to examine MUCH more carefully everything I eat! The two protagonists -- Maggie O'Dell and Ben Platt [she's FBI, he's an Army colonel who works for USAMRID] -- seem to have a backstory (and a future in forthcoming books); their two cases ultimately intersect and give the reader a lot to think about, in terms of how little control government agencies can actually have over the safety of our food supply, "thanks" to mega-rich corporations with "good" lobbyists.I haven't read any other Maggie O'Dell books, but this one impressed me and I will look for more.
    • 4/5
      First thing,I have to be honest,was disappointed when I did not get Harlar Coben latest book "Shelter".Love the Myron Bolitar series and was wanting to be one of the first to read it...but the powers-that-be knew what was best for me and sent this book...It should come with a warning,,,"ONCE STARTED CAN'T PUT DOWN" Have never heard of Alex Kava but she is on my radar now. From the first page to the last not sure what is going to happen...May have been my first Alex Kava book,,,but will not be my last...James Patterson---Micheal Connelly---Harlar Coben---Janet Evanovich---Alex Kava...my favorite list keeps growing...and so should your list...
    • 4/5
      This is the first Alex Kava book I have read and I have to say I enjoyed it! This book is the 9th Maggie O'Dell book and even though I have not read the first eight I did not feel lost or like I was missing anything. However, I will now be looking for the first 8 books and reading them in order (because I do hate reading books out of order!!!). I thought the book was a very quick read, had a great story line and good characters. I normally read romantic suspense books but this was a mystery book that I would recommend to others. I look forward to reading more of the Maggie O'Dell books!
    • 4/5
      Deep in rural Nebraska, cows are turning up mutilated and teenagers are turning up dead, and Maggie O'Dell, FBI profiler, is dropped into the mystery. At the same time, kids in two different schools are turning up sick, and Maggie's new love interest is pulled into the investigation into the cause. Are these two mysteries related? Hotwire, the ninth in Kava's Maggie O'Dell series, is a decent, but not great, mystery. The plot depends on some amazing coincidences and while we learn who's responsible, we never learn why. But it won't matter all that much to fans of the series - what's more of interest here are the characters and their lives. If you like this sort of story with an arc that extends across the series, I'd say there's a good chance you'd like Hotwire. But I also suspect that you'd want to start from the beginning of the series.
    • 2/5
      One of the things I love about reading in the mystery/thriller genre is that I usually learn something new. In this case, Alex Kava weaves lot of information -- about the Nebraska census, the role of the USDA, and the industrial food chain, and explains why a 20,000 acre pine forest exists in the middle of the plains -- into the middle of her mystery. The history and civics lessons were interesting; unfortunately, the mystery wasn't so exciting. Dawson Hayes and his teenage friends were just out to have a good time. Chew a little Salvia, hang out in the woods, and maybe scare the losers a bit. But everything goes wrong when unexplained lights filled the air and the electrical current starts to flow. By the end of the night, a couple of kids are dead and the rest are afraid of what they saw. Across the country, two government employees meet to figure out what has caused mass illness in two public schools. Is it as simple as food poisoning, or has the cafeteria food been purposefully contaminated? I don't think either mystery was satisfactorily wrapped up. Yes, we learn "who done it" but there's little explanation of the "why." And I didn't much care. It's too bad - I liked many of the main characters, including Maggie, Ben, and Lucy. I would be interested in learning how their relationship develops over time. But, in the end I didn't enjoy the plot or the writing enough to pick up another (past or future) entry in the series.
    • 2/5
      Weird stuff is going on in Nebraska—mutilated cows, strange lights at night—and Special Agent Maggie O’Dell is investigating instead of teaching classes at a conference like she is supposed to be doing. Meanwhile, potential boyfriend Army Colonel Benjamin Platt, M.D. is working on a seemingly-unrelated series of food poisonings in the east. It’s a shame that the inside flap tells you that these cases will “collide”, because they never really do, and it sets up the reader for a disappointment.Among other things that don’t work about this book is Kava’s writing style. It’s based on short, choppy sentences and overuse of the passive voice. She inserts information important to her plot development with “Earlier, . . . “ instead of taking the time to work it in where it belongs--which is to say, earlier. Kava delivers unnecessary background information through unrealistic dialogue. Her foreshadowing is heavy-handed and invariably dropped into the closing sentence of a chapter, giving the book a predictable rhythm which, by the end, serves mainly to annoy. There is little character development—to the degree that on some points characters are not believable, and it is occasionally hard to remember who is who. Kava tells us what her characters are all about in a few sentences rather than giving us the chance to get to know them for ourselves over the course of the book. The county sheriff and the obligatory lesbian cop are clichés. And we learn about various characters' interrelationships in much the same way we learned about their personalities, via banal musings. There is equally little sense of place, with what little there is offered in short travelogues inserted into the dialogue. Finally, there are the outright mistakes that slipped by the editors. There are transitive verbs without objects, odd constructions, misplaced modifiers, personifications, “digestive tracks”, and mistakes in spelling like “baggie” clothes--which phrase triggers the distracting image of Maggie headed down a country lane in a jogging outfit pieced together from, well, Baggies™. In the meantime, Kava never really pulls together her two main subplot lines. The end result of all this is that, despite some plot twists in the last sixty pages, the only thing about this book that will “keep you up all night” (from the cover) will be a desire to get it over with.
    • 4/5
      Missing The X-Files? Sunday evenings still seem a little lonely around that 9 o'clock time slot? That might be a good time to pick up the latest entry in Alex Kava's Maggie O'Dell series.Cue the familiar theme music as the book opens with Maggie investigating suspicious cattle mutilations in rural (really, really rural) Nebraska. It's not long before she finds herself on the scene of a teenagers' party gone massively wrong, with unexplained injuries, red-eyed creatures, and flashing lights figuring heaving in victim descriptions. In the meantime, Platt, her associate, finds himself tangled up in a decidedly shadowy string of school food poisonings that are shaking up the highest levels of the USDA and CDC. All around, suspicions of conspiracy are afoot, with an element of the unreal hanging over the remote Nebraska territory.You'll find that this novel reads along at a very, very swift clip; I easily polished it off in an afternoon. That's not to say there's no substance; it's just very quickly plotted, and event follows event with very little pause for characters' navel-gazing (which may or may not be your cup of tea on this particular day; it all depends on what you're looking for). I didn't mind the lack of introspection here, but I'm new to the series and thus don't have an attachment to the characters, and that may have contributed to my not needing to know a lot about their psychology. In a series that I was a longtime fan of, I might have felt that this was a lack. You get an occasional glimmer or hint of a personal issue, but Kava doesn't dwell on these moments, preferring instead to move on to the next lights-and-action shot.Another thing that didn't bother me but might bother some other reviewers is that the storyline bounces back and forth between the food investigations (mainly in the DC environs) and Nebraska. The action is thus a bit like watching a ping-pong ball at times. For me, this just ratched up the suspense by pulling away from scenes at tense moments and propelling my attention elsewhere, but others might find this gimmicky and tiresome. Again, personal preference. I thought Kava handled it well.I liked the characters and thought, even without extensive psychologizing, that they were well-drawn and likable; I'll seek out more of this series, having tested the waters. Kava also did a good job of evoking the rural Nebraska landscape and its isolation. The eerieness I referenced earlier was well-handled: atmospheric without being ostentatiously exotic.First-time readers of Kava should not be put off by the fact that this is the ninth book in the series; you can jump right in and catch up with no problems. Being a first-time reader myself, I can't comment on its place in the series as a whole, except to say I hope that the rest of the series doesn't disappoint!
    • 4/5
      Hotwire
      3.5 Stars

      As with most of the recent books in the Maggie O'Dell series, the basic premise is excellent but the execution is only so-so.

      The writing is fast paced (not surprising given the relatively short chapters) and the story is compelling enough to keep you turning the pages. Nevertheless, the various plot threads, including the attack on the teenagers in the forest, the food contamination and the government conspiracy, are all treated rather superficially and end up being a bit of a mish-mash.

      Moreover, there is only some meager character development with regard to the personal lives of Ben Platt and Julia Racine rather than Maggie, which is disappointing.

      It looks like the spark of brilliance that characterized the first few books in this series has gone out but I keep hoping that it will return.

    • 2/5
      Weird stuff is going on in Nebraska—mutilated cows, strange lights at night—and Special Agent Maggie O’Dell is investigating instead of teaching classes at a conference like she is supposed to be doing. Meanwhile, potential boyfriend Army Colonel Benjamin Platt, M.D. is working on a seemingly-unrelated series of food poisonings in the east. It’s a shame that the inside flap tells you that these cases will “collide”, because they never really do, and it sets up the reader for a disappointment.Among other things that don’t work about this book is Kava’s writing style. It’s based on short, choppy sentences and overuse of the passive voice. She inserts information important to her plot development with “Earlier, . . . “ instead of taking the time to work it in where it belongs--which is to say, earlier. Kava delivers unnecessary background information through unrealistic dialogue. Her foreshadowing is heavy-handed and invariably dropped into the closing sentence of a chapter, giving the book a predictable rhythm which, by the end, serves mainly to annoy. There is little character development—to the degree that on some points characters are not believable, and it is occasionally hard to remember who is who. Kava tells us what her characters are all about in a few sentences rather than giving us the chance to get to know them for ourselves over the course of the book. The county sheriff and the obligatory lesbian cop are clichés. And we learn about various characters' interrelationships in much the same way we learned about their personalities, via banal musings. There is equally little sense of place, with what little there is offered in short travelogues inserted into the dialogue. Finally, there are the outright mistakes that slipped by the editors. There are transitive verbs without objects, odd constructions, misplaced modifiers, personifications, “digestive tracks”, and mistakes in spelling like “baggie” clothes--which phrase triggers the distracting image of Maggie headed down a country lane in a jogging outfit pieced together from, well, Baggies™. In the meantime, Kava never really pulls together her two main subplot lines. The end result of all this is that, despite some plot twists in the last sixty pages, the only thing about this book that will “keep you up all night” (from the cover) will be a desire to get it over with.
    • 4/5
      Alex Kava has written another great Maggie O'Dell mystery. This time, Maggie is investigating cattle mutilations in Nebraska. But while she's there, Maggie and State Patrol investigator Donny Fergussen find a bunch of high school kids – some injured, some dead – in an isolated Nebraska forest. Although Maggie is supposed to give a workshop in Omaha, she is drawn into the case when several of the surviving students are later found dead.This fast-paced thriller is another thumbs up for Maggie O'Dell fans.
    • 3/5
      Somewhere on government property in Nebraska a group of kids are nearly electrocuted during a drug party and not far away cattle are being mutilated. This is what FBI agent Maggie O’Dell has to deal with. Meanwhile on the east coast, a group of kids get sick from eating cafeteria food and Maggie’s friend Dr. Benjamin Platt is investigating that. Are these two cases connected or are we reading two stories?This is the first Maggie O’Dell story I read and although intrigued by the possibility of government conspiracies, I didn’t care for the jumping back from one subplot to the next. It was satisfactory.
    • 4/5
      This next installment in the Maggie O’Dell series finds Maggie in Nebraska investigating a case of mutilated cattle. Nearby a group of kids are in a forest tripping out on salvia when a flash of lights and heat leaves some of them scorched. The plot hops from Nebraska to D.C. where Army Colonel Ben Platt has been called in to identify the bacteria that is making school children sick. It appears to be an unusual strain of salmonella, not unlike the recent case in Germany where victims were sickened and some died from contaminated sprouts. Kava is either a psychic or timed her book just right. Maggie and Platt are unaware that their cases are connected. To add a bit of X-Files to the case, Maggie encounters Wesley Stotter, an amateur UFO buff who has been an enthusiast since his father took pictures during the Roswell, NM incident. After three more of the teens die mysteriously, Maggie starts to question whether the incident in the forest and the subsequent teen deaths (two in a car accident, one by apparent suicide) are even related. Platt isn’t finding reps from the USDA cooperative. Exactly what are they hiding? This new strain of salmonella appears to not respond to antibiotics. Platt begins to wonder if it is manufactured. Kava’s O’Dell series has always been enjoyable with FBI Agent O’Dell being feisty but vulnerable. Platt was introduced in the last book and it appears he may be in O’Dell’s future.
    • 3/5
      Bizarre murders, cattle mutilations, and government conspiracies and suspected coverups are at the forefront of HOTWIRE, the ninth title in the Maggie O'Dell series by Alex Kava. Maggie, an FBI agent, is still recuperating from her last assignment and has been sent to Colorado to lecture at a law enforcement seminar. She is "asked" to look into some cattle mutilations in Nebraska and the story takes off.Maggie doesn't just get to see some strange cattle mutilations, but soon spearheads an investigation into the possible electrocution deaths (or murders) and injuries of some teenagers in the Nebraska Sandhills. Both the cattle mutilations and the teens’ deaths were bloodless and have other similarities. While Maggie has her hands full with the investigation in Nebraska, her friends Dr. Benjamin Platt of USAMRID, Washington, D.C. Police Detective Julia Racine, and FBI Agent R.J. Tully are investigating what may be a terrorism case relating to food poisoning in the DC school system. HOTWIRE provides a lot of thrills and suspense but also asks some hard and socially pertinent questions, such as: Why is it the FDA can shut down a business due to tampering or contamination but the USDA can't do the same under similar circumstances? It doesn't appear that the food poisonings in DC have anything to do with cattle mutilations in Nebraska or do they? The action and investigations take plenty of twists and turns but kept my attention to the end. It was nice seeing a softer side to Julia Racine as well as seeing Dr. Platt in action once again. Regrettably Tully had only a guest appearance in this story. HOTWIRE features great characters, great action and a well-developed plot. There’s a lot going on in the story, but Ms. Kava neatly ties it together at the end for a great and quick read.
    • 4/5
      Missing The X-Files? Sunday evenings still seem a little lonely around that 9 o'clock time slot? That might be a good time to pick up the latest entry in Alex Kava's Maggie O'Dell series.Cue the familiar theme music as the book opens with Maggie investigating suspicious cattle mutilations in rural (really, really rural) Nebraska. It's not long before she finds herself on the scene of a teenagers' party gone massively wrong, with unexplained injuries, red-eyed creatures, and flashing lights figuring heaving in victim descriptions. In the meantime, Platt, her associate, finds himself tangled up in a decidedly shadowy string of school food poisonings that are shaking up the highest levels of the USDA and CDC. All around, suspicions of conspiracy are afoot, with an element of the unreal hanging over the remote Nebraska territory.You'll find that this novel reads along at a very, very swift clip; I easily polished it off in an afternoon. That's not to say there's no substance; it's just very quickly plotted, and event follows event with very little pause for characters' navel-gazing (which may or may not be your cup of tea on this particular day; it all depends on what you're looking for). I didn't mind the lack of introspection here, but I'm new to the series and thus don't have an attachment to the characters, and that may have contributed to my not needing to know a lot about their psychology. In a series that I was a longtime fan of, I might have felt that this was a lack. You get an occasional glimmer or hint of a personal issue, but Kava doesn't dwell on these moments, preferring instead to move on to the next lights-and-action shot.Another thing that didn't bother me but might bother some other reviewers is that the storyline bounces back and forth between the food investigations (mainly in the DC environs) and Nebraska. The action is thus a bit like watching a ping-pong ball at times. For me, this just ratched up the suspense by pulling away from scenes at tense moments and propelling my attention elsewhere, but others might find this gimmicky and tiresome. Again, personal preference. I thought Kava handled it well.I liked the characters and thought, even without extensive psychologizing, that they were well-drawn and likable; I'll seek out more of this series, having tested the waters. Kava also did a good job of evoking the rural Nebraska landscape and its isolation. The eerieness I referenced earlier was well-handled: atmospheric without being ostentatiously exotic.First-time readers of Kava should not be put off by the fact that this is the ninth book in the series; you can jump right in and catch up with no problems. Being a first-time reader myself, I can't comment on its place in the series as a whole, except to say I hope that the rest of the series doesn't disappoint!