A common complaint about much of the suspense being written today is that it’s too gory. Serial killers abound and each crime is described in excruciating detail. Nothing is too gross or detailed. Enter Alex Kava. She has written a serial killer novel that has relatively few scenes of gore and mayhem. And though I’ve found that many authors go way over the top, this is a case where the author didn’t – and caused some very real difficulties for the reader.

This is a sequel to A Perfect Evil, which introduced FBI Special Agent Maggie O’Dell. Now she is facing her demons, real and imagined. The man she hunted for two years, a serial killer called The Collector, has escaped from prison and Maggie is jumping at every shadow convinced he’s coming for her once again. Her paranoia, while understandable and merited, has her on thin ice as far as the Bureau is concerned. And that makes her situation even more precarious.

Much of the suspense is generated by Maggie’s very real feelings of being tormented by The Collector. The man did escape from prison and he did attack her once before. It’s believable that she would get a major security system, have nightmares and insomnia, drink more then she should, and suspect her nemesis when her neighbor, an attractive woman, disappears. Too bad for her, her colleagues see all this behavior as just more out-of-control behavior and her superior won’t let her anywhere near the investigation. Her very understandable behavior is what’s keeping her out of the loop, and that ratchets up the tension level, while the killer may be getting ever closer.

Killer? Killers? We’re supposed to wonder, but I wasn’t just wondering, I was scratching my head. Who is this man? Okay, sure he’s the guy who escaped from prison, or maybe he isn’t. But other than that and the scenes where he’s thinking sexual thoughts about his victims, we’re shown very little about what makes this killer tick. That’s where the failure to dwell in the gore, though admirable, makes for a problem with the character development. It’s not that the gore must be there. Instead it’s the lack of everything that usually accompanies the murders that creates the flaw in the plotting. Usually if an author is describing the killing as it happens, they’re also providing valuable insight into the killer’s motives and character. Kava does tell the reader a bit about The Collector, but she doesn’t show us much at all.

The one character that is shown and drawn with great, loving detail is Maggie O’Dell. Maggie is a complex woman with very human problems. She’s not always likable but she’s always interesting, and thank goodness for that. If only every character had been drawn so well. Maggie’s colleagues and her supervisor, though sketched in more fully than the killer, often act in unbelievable ways. At one point, the investigators have a lead to property owned by the prime suspect. There may be a live victim there, but it’s too difficult to get through the bureaucracy on a weekend, so they’ll have to wait until Monday. Huh? The FBI can’t get a warrant on a weekend? That’s just silly.

Specific details of murder only work if it furthers the plot, but because those scenes were missing here, others were too. Split Second does provide suspense and some thoughtful ideas about what anyone would do when faced with a deadly threat. Maggie is faced with this worry and it made her a very sympathetic character. In fact I liked Maggie so much that I will definitely follow her to another book. But I wasn’t interested enough in this killer to want to go back and read A Perfect Evil .