Mysteries Galore.com

Reviewed by Allen Hott

Damaged contains all the elements of a great thriller and it is in fact just that.

Alex Kava has brought back FBI Special Agent Maggie O’Dell and as usual has dropped her in the middle of many problems.

After a Coast Guard helicopter and its rescue swimmer find a large cooler floating in Pensacola Bay, they find not shipwreck survivors but a pile of human bones. This surprise package brings the Department of Homeland Security into action. The deputy director of the Department decides that while he is going down to Pensacola to check it out he will ask the FBI for O’Dell to help in the investigation.

It turns out that the timing of their trip coincides with the anticipated arrival of Hurricane Isaac, which is heading straight toward Pensacola. And at the same time Colonel Benjamin Platt, the medical director of USAMRIID a unit specializing in fighting infectious diseases has just been called to the Pensacola Naval Air Station to look into badly infected combatants just returned from Afghanistan. Strangely all of those infected have recently undergone amputations.

O’Dell becomes closely connected to Liz Bailey who is the rescue swimmer of the Coast Guard helicopter that made the discovery of the cooler. And Liz Bailey’s brother-in-law is a funeral director in Pensacola who has recently put together a business deal with another Panhandle resident. This resident collects and sells human parts to a large medical association that uses the items for research and educational purposes. Strangely enough although there are laws against selling organs without federal government controls there are no federal laws pertaining to part of the body.

Kava very neatly brings together the various parts of this intriguing thriller and keeps the reader’s interest throughout. Descriptions of the hurricane as it gets closer and closer are very real and make the reader feel the winds and the rain.

Also the characters are well defined and contribute much to the overall feel of the book through their actions and conversations. Not the kind of story where the reader has to figure out who did it and why but what happens as this well written story unfolds in the midst of a hurricane is what the author has aptly described.