The Crooked Staircase by Dean Koontz, Book 3 in the Jane Hawk Series

Well, I thought I liked this book but I think I watched more Netflix than spending time reading the 3rd Jane Hawk novel.  It's wasn't a bad read but I just felt it wasn't the book I should have been reading at this time.

Spoilers below.

This book is like the others in the Jane Hawk series.  Lot's of deaths, kidnapping and then there's Jane doing what she can to keep the Arcadians from taking over the country and then the world.  They do this by injecting nanotechnology into chosen people that will act as their slaves and do their bidding like in the book the Manchurian Candidate. This technology can be started and ended with a catchphrase, which was actually "play Manchurian with me" until they realized that Jane had figured this out.  These chosen are then left to do the work of the Arcadians without knowing they are living a life that they have no control over, sometimes just living a normal day-to-day life and then they might have to do something bad, like killing people and then committing suicide before they can be examined.  Some of these injected people are police, Senators, Supreme Court Justices and every organization in our national security alphabet organizations.  Jane also has to protect her 5-year-old son from being kidnapped and sold into slavery or murdered, which will also bring Jane Hawk in from the dark.

The Crooked Staircase opens with dueling chapters between Tanuja & Sanjay Shukla and Jane Hawk.  Tanuja and Sanjay are orphaned brother and sister that are beginning their book writing careers and are deemed too controversial to the Arcadians, that their opinions are too different from theirs to live.  Teams of law enforcement that have been injected try to track down the siblings.  The Jane side of the book is her trying to track down Arcadians and getting evidence to clear her name.  Later the Arcadians do a full court press to find Travis, Jane's 5-year-old son.

While this is a good cat and mouse book, never knowing who is the cat and who is the mouse, it can get a little monotonous.  The Jane Hawk series is pretty good so far, but I can't do like I normally do and just read straight through the series like a lot of series I have done in the past, so now I will switch up my reading a little.

My rating is 5 of 10.

The Crooked Staircase by Dean Koontz

Jane Hawk series, book 3.