The Pain Hunter

The Broken Doll, Book 1

By: Jeffery Deaver

Narrated by: Christina Traister

A violent jailbreak bleeds into a street fair in Wisconsin. In the wake of the carnage, a getaway van barrels down a rural highway. Inside are two men with a tenuous bond: an obsession with pain.

One is Paul Offenbach, a sadistic crime boss with a life-threatening bullet wound. The other is his hostage, Dr. Stuart Collier, now faced with a harrowing ethical quandary. Mile by mile, as a calculated battle of wills and wits plays out, the killer plots his next move. So does the doctor, sworn to do no harm but desperate to escape.

From internationally bestselling master of suspense Jeffery Deaver comes The Pain Hunter, part of The Broken Doll Collection, a series of interconnected short stories about killers and prey, justice and revenge, that can be read or listened to in a single breathless experience.

©2022 Gunner Publications, LLC. (P)2022 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Too disjointed

I get that the author intentionally broke this up to tell the story at different times, and from different perspectives, but it wasn’t always clear when and where he was in the narration, at the beginning of each of these stories. In fact, figuring out who was who, and where we were in the narrative, took me too far out of the story to make it enjoyable.

A very scary criminal on the loose!

The audiobook version of this story was capably narrated by Christina Traister. She does a good job keeping the suspense high. I occasionally got confused as to which character was speaking (occupational hazard of there being one narrator and with all the characters being male). And I was listening while driving which probably didn't help my concentration.
This was a good story; apparently it is the opening event in an interconnected group of stories. It ends with a cliffhanger of sorts, the way a television episode leaves you wondering what will happen next week. I guess I'll need to track down the rest of the series.
Read on: Sep 28, 2024
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It’s suspenseful

It kept me on the edge of my seat! Watch out for the twists and turns

narrator was rather wooden.

a little dull in places. fell asleep several times and had to rewind. hoping for part 2 to be better.

Good Start

Fast-paced short story with a lackluster ending. I was hoping for some ironic or maniacal twist. Let's see how book two goes.
Part of the Kindle Unlimited catalog.