After a first book sold over a million copies, Anthony E. Zuiker, creator and writer of the TV series CSI, signs a second volume entitled to Level 26 Level 26: Dark Prophecy. Here we find Steve Dark, the hero of the first game. This man is the best criminal hunter in the world. It has the ability to slip into the skin of the craziest killers, it happens to think like them to better track them down. After solving the case Sqweegel, Dark leaves the Special Affairs branch of the FBI for which he worked. But when a mysterious killer emerged, drawing on the tarot cards to the staging of his crimes, Dark decides to investigate. If I had liked the first book, I did not feel the same passion when I read Dark prophecy. Certainly Zuiker has written a very good detective novel, but I found it much less successful if Level 26 froze the blood by making us into the spirit of Sqweegel, I found that the "killer cards" was much less convincing. Moreover crimes were nothing special and the characters are drafts: - Dark is just there to its investigation and the character is not really exploited. Without saying too much, I think, given the past the detective, he could have a little more flesh the hero. I wish Dark reflect a little: the conclusions it came too easily. This is hardly credible. - Constance Riggins and are only there to do ... pretty. Yet members of Special Affairs, they finally struggle to solve the case. One feels the slightly lagging. Besides I found Riggins completely off base in his suspects searches! - The introduction of the character of Lisa Graysmith is, in turn, completely botched. One feels the daughter unclear fifteen kilometers. For the characters, this is rather missed!
The story could, after all, make up the lack of depth of the characters. With the first murder, I was full of hope: a horrible scene layout, a mystery, but the pace was soon out of breath. It took a day for Dark understand the procedure of the killer. And for the killings, if the former are very successful, one wonders if later, the killer was not a bit bored of the work required because, for the latest killings, I would not have made the reconciliation with the tarot cards, the resemblance becomes less and less obvious. Anyway, everything is going too fast. I had the impression that Zuiker tried to tell us as much as possible in a limited number of pages. It's hard to explain but the result is quite messy. Let's just hope the third book will be developed.
