Serial Killer

I think it would be fair to say that PROMISE by Tony Cavanaugh has been talked up in these parts.  Having read the book now, you can see many of the reasons for the general feeling of enthusiasm, although to be fair, the central storyline of this book is going to be problematic for some readers.

In Darian Richards, Cavanaugh has created a very interesting central character. Retired head of Victoria's Homicide Squad, shooting victim, not everything is immediately as it seems with Richards. A hard working cop with the victims and their families at the forefront of his mind always, his focus means that some of the case resolutions aren't exactly straightforward pieces of justice. Haunted by his failure to keep his promises to victim's families, Richards is, not to put too fine a point on it, morally ambiguous. Richards is, however, one of the aspects of the book that works incredibly well. He's not your normal cop, he's working outside the police system, his special skill - an ability to get inside the head of a killer, to think and act and find them based on instinct and intuition.

Richards is ably supported in this book by Maria, Senior-Constable with Noosa Police, outsider because of her relationship with ex-strip joint manager Casey Lack.  Mate of Richards since their time in Melbourne, Casey revels in an ongoing supply of vintage slogan t-shirts, and some very dodgy equipment. Maria and Casey form the local branch of Richard's support team. Back in Melbourne they are supported by Isosceles. Geek, technical genius, edge dweller, surveillance, hacking, computer expert, apartment bound, acerbic, pointed, invaluable backup. The author has done a particularly good job of building a small but well-fleshed out team (saving Richards from lurching into the cliché of the lone wolf into the bargain), albeit this team has a hefty dose of eccentrics.

The storytelling style is the other element that is good. Sparse, dark, tight, acerbic and dryly funny in places, this aspect was especially pleasing. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that the author's background as a script writer wasn't a little voice in the back of my mind as I read. Whilst you can see this book on the screen without too much of a stretch of the imagination, it avoided that dreaded "script" as a book feeling. Best of all there was a profoundly Australian feel to the book, the dialogue was taut and pointed, dry and extremely authentic.

The aspect of the book that was less pleasing was not just that here is yet another mad, bad and nasty serial killer targeting young woman, but the use of chapters inside the killer's mind, revealing, what is happening to the victims as they take a long time to die, although it does veer away from too much graphic detail. Given that other aspects of the plot - the chase for the killer, the steps taken by Richards, and his sidekicks in tracking down this madman were very well done, the inside the head aspect was disappointing. That idea that you have to be in the lunatic's head for a great portion of a book, privy to the details of his twisted torture methods, and to the feelings of his victims to ramp up the tension or make the reader increasingly uncomfortable is, these days, somewhat overdone. To the point where it's teetering dangerously close to boring. A pity, as the rest of the plot is clever, and the ultimate outcome shocking enough without having to spend too much up close and personal time with yet another barking madman.

Having said that, I'm perfectly prepared to admit that I read way too much crime fiction, and that I've developed a rather virulent allergy to mad hatter serial killer plot-lines unless there is something that makes that aspect of a plot different or particularly compelling. For me the serial killer voice might not have worked in PROMISE, but there was more than enough difference in creating a great new character, written well, with an interesting chase and just enough moral ambiguity and questionable behaviour to make me get as close as I can to forgetting the downside. Certainly I'd be right up front in the queue for a second book featuring Darian Richards or any of his team.

Serial killer storylines.  We've all said it.  Over it.  One more serial killer storyline and I swear.....   So I'll adjust previous assertions and instead say I'm over SOME serial killer storylines.

THE PRIEST, the first crime novel from Irish author Gerard O'Donovan has a serial killer that actually doesn't kill all of his victims.  Instead they are horribly injured, disfigured, tortured and abused, but they don't all die.  And our serial attacker is one of those mad, bad, weird religious nutter types - the burns that he leaves his victim's with eventually reveal that he's using some sort of Cross shaped implement.  Needless to say, the nickname of "The Priest".  That probably means a whole lot of reasons why you'd think twice before picking up this book.

But there are a lot of things going for this book.  For a start it's mercifully free of the dreaded "in the serial killer's head" viewpoint.  Secondly, some of his victims do survive - albeit maimed and dreadfully injured.  This gives some opportunity for some interesting twists in the personal stories, in particular, of the first victim.  Jesica Salazar is the much loved daughter of an older man - a high-ranking Spanish Diplomat, in Dublin for just a short time to experience a different culture, she is found after an evening out in a nightclub, alive but battered and horribly burnt.  The sex crimes team steps into the investigation, headed by Claire Brogan.  DI Mike Mulcahy has recently returned from a high-profile specialist drug investigation position in Spain, and he's not best pleased at all when he's seconded to the team.  They need somebody to translate, and when he steps into a disagreement between a Spanish Official and one of the team, he's even more involved as the Spanish authorities look to him.  Which means nobody is pleased.  Not the team, not Mike.  Add the character of journalist Siobhan Fallon who is as fearless in her journalism as she is insecure about her personal life.

Mulcahy is a good central character, of the slighly embittered, strong willed, grumpy type.  He's an extremely likeable sort of character - vaguely reminiscent of Rebus, but I'm prepared to give O'Donovan the benefit of the doubt over the naming of journalist Siobhan Fallon.  The tentative relationship between these two has a feeling of reality about it - particularly when the roles of Journalist and Detective Inspector clash.

Alongside excellent characterisations and a really good example of team policing tension, there's a pretty good plot here.  The tension doesn't let up in THE PRIEST - possibly because you know that this killer doesn't always kill his victims, partly because he presents such an obvious danger as there appears to be no predictability to actions.  The only downside really is a slightly heavy-handed and predictable use of descriptive language, which smacked a little too much of some sort of writing police talk manual and didn't always feel all that authentic.  Having said that, despite the serial killer theme, I really enjoyed THE PRIEST and am intrigued by the prospect of a pairing of Mulcahy and Fallon.  Hopefully there will be more books featuring one or both of these characters.

You sometimes just have to wonder about the bravery of the people who select the blurbs for the front of books.  THE WHISPERER, debut book by Italian author Donato Carrisi, comes with the attribution "The most eagerly awaited thriller in the world?  It is written by an unknown Italian' Il Giornale".  Now I'll be honest, this blurb really threw me, it seems to set high expectations, particularly for a debut novel.

The central thread of the book is the story of the discovery of six severed arms in a forest clearing without bodies, but identified by forensics as belonging to girls aged between eight and thirteen.  There are five girls in that age group reported missing, but with no bodies identifying the victims isn't quick, and there are no clues about the owner of the sixth arm.

A close-knit team of investigators with Criminologist Goran Gavila as the central point is assigned the case.  An experienced investigator, Gavila is naturally inclined towards being rebellious, but he has his working methods and he and his team and comfortable with each other.  Mila Vasquez is a young female police officer with a difficult past, who is equally rebellious, boyish, prickly, unable to relate to others, but with an eerie ability to locate missing people.  She's bought into Gavila's team for this case.  They are able to work together well, his team aren't so easy for Mila to get on with.

The investigating team have a difficult task, as the bodies slowly starting to appear, they are looking for a serial killer, and the sixth victim - not reported missing and very possibly still alive.  The killer seems to be leaving macabre clues with each discovery of a new body, and the team must move quickly and deftly to have a chance of keeping her alive.

I came away from THE WHISPERER really unsure about how I feel about the book.  On the one hand it's an interesting, complex plot with some twists at the end that came as a big surprise.  On the other hand there's yet another damaged investigator; a frisson of romance between the two central characters, a team that doesn't handle the imposition of an outsider well; a cast of characters with secrets.  Combine all of that with yet another serial killer targeting children and there's a real sense of been there / done that if you read a lot of crime fiction.  Of course it's unreasonable to assume that any book is going to be completely unique, and there are elements here that have a freshness about them.  The pairing of a cop and a scientific investigator was well done - creating a different dynamic between the two central characters, shown up particularly by the cop versus cop tensions between Mila and the team.  Also THE WHISPERER used the stagey, calculating way that the killer used his victims to play games with the investigating team in a chilling and uncomfortably realistic manner.  

I think my greatest sense of disappointment in THE WHISPERER is that there was no particular sense of a place or a culture in which the killings are occurring.  The location wasn't obvious, the book could have been set anywhere, so I never quite got a complete sense of reality, it somehow seemed to dissipate the threat.  The damaged central investigator line also didn't quite work - it was almost too predictable, as was the romantic entanglement, and the rest of the team's antagonism.  The antagonism seemed too broad brush, and whilst there is some attempt at explanation, some justification if you like, it was hard to move past the tension for tension's sake feeling.  

Having said all of that, it's a good plot, with some cleverly done twists and turns that will keep the reader guessing, and will engage.  The way the characters secrets are revealed works in the main, although some readers may agree that some of the elements are a tad unbelievable, even for fiction.  Overall I came away conflicted, not sure enough to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the book, but certainly not able to say that I didn't like it at all.  But that's not so surprising with a debut book so I'd definitely read another by this author.  

One of the things that I really like about reading review books is that I constantly find absolutes in my reading tastes aren't.  Ask me about serial killer books before reading RANDOM and I would have categorically stated been there, over it.  Add being inside the serial killer's head for the entire of the book and I'd have put my hand on my heart and said it's all too tedious.  Then I read RANDOM and found myself really hooked on the internal monologue of a serial killer.

Based in Glasgow, RANDOM, on one level is your typical serial killer book.  Unconnected victim's, strange signature from the killer, police are baffled.  This time the killer isn't using a signature methodology, and there doesn't seem to be any rhyme nor reason to the killings.   Whilst there is a police investigation and DS Rachel Narey is struggling against pressure from police hierarchy and the shenanigans that go on at that level when the media are finally alerted (by our killer) to the connections, this isn't really a story of the pursuit of a killer.  Where RANDOM starts to vary is that our serial killer in this book is undoubtedly vicious and driven and quite quite odd - but he's also flawed and not mad, and strangely not totally bad.  He's also made a big mistake with the selection of one of his victims which makes his life very very complicated and the police pursuit the least of his problems.  Told from the point of view of the killer, his true identity is slowly revealed, as are the methods he is using to select his victims, the way that he kills his victims, and even more slowly, his reasons.

RANDOM really was a book that I simply wasn't expecting, especially after reading the blurb with that slow sinking feeling.  But being a review book, you have to press on and I am really really glad I did.  It seems a very odd thing to be saying about a serial killer book, but I enjoyed this book.  RANDOM is undoubtedly manipulative, the reader is pulled into this killer's mind and into his life in a way that was subtle and clever.  Balancing the way that this man selects his victims, the way that he is so ruthless in his decisions on who to kill and who not to, against a home life that is not your typical abusive, weird family relationship, but something more touching, sad, heart-breaking; and I did find myself in a really odd place - feeling sympathy for a serial killer.

There's a final twist in the tail of this book which on one level I knew was probably coming, but I didn't quite expect the way it played out.  And it was affecting, and challenging and sad and right and wrong all at the same time.  RANDOM was a real reading revelation for me.  Flagged as a thriller it is a pacy, tense and disturbing book.  It's also a reflective, moving and quite emotional book.  Perhaps if you're a reader who holds their preference for no more serial killers under any circumstances closer to their core than I do, this might not be the book for you.  For me, it was one of those books that took all my reading assumptions, pitched them out a window and ran over them with a bus just to make sure they were well dead and buried.

One of the best things about a good thriller is when they present a scenario that could just possibly happen.  The reader of SPLINTER has no trouble at all believing in the possibility of the kidnapping of the child of Hollywood celebrities; they can join in the initial rush of sympathy for parents who have been put in an impossible situation, and as the fictional public sympathy starts to splinter into suspicion, the reader will be there along for the ride.

The problem with this kidnapping is that Milo is found dead within his parents own home - in the basement, suffocated.  There are so many complicating factors in the early stage of this investigation - the local police have really bungled the crime scene; the child is discovered by his own father which helps to confuse and obfuscate reactions; but the biggest problem is that Sarah, once called in as head of the FBI investigation team, really suspects that the parents are hiding something.  There's also the classic problem of the closed room scenario.  The basement that Milo was found in is within his parents home, within a secure compound.  The family have their own security personnel - so how on earth could somebody have got into the place?  When Sarah finds that a former bodyguard has gone missing, and she and her team get a chance to review the crime scene themselves, slowly the case starts to crack open.

Slowly doesn't mean to imply that there's anything slow in the action of this book.  There are a lot of red herrings, and a lot happening.  The plot in SPLINTER is nicely complicated, with that encouraging touch of reality to just make it all the more hair-raising and therefore involving.  There's even a bit of budding romance, designed more to complicate things than create any sort of rosy happy ending.   There are some backward references to the first Sarah Reilly book - Maelstrom - but not enough to put off a new reader though.  As in the tradition of all good thrillers, there's a high energy finale with a bit of jeopardy and some professional and personal resolution. 

There were a number of things to really like about SPLINTER.  The reality of the proposed scenario made the threat seem extremely pointed and believable.  The matter-of-fact way in which Sarah acted and reacted was engaging, she was possessed but not arrogant, questioning but not whinging, and in this book in particular, she simply was who she was and she (and the reader) got on with it.  The ending was a good rollercoaster of the good versus the bad and the what not being exactly who you thought it was.  There's a big setup for the villain of the next book at the end as well, and that's hinting at something that could get very very interesting.  I'm looking forward to some serious fireworks when Sarah goes up against the Puppeteer.

Nigel Latta is a clinical psychologist who specialises in assessing and treating sex offenders. It's dark place he has to visit on a regular basis and EXECUTION LULLABY reflects that. It's a compelling read if you have the stomach for it, with a very clever twist at the end. I found EXECUTION LULLABY unputdownable

MAELSTROM is a no-apologies thriller.  I have to be honest and say thrillers aren’t usually my choice of reading. They work better for me on the big screen than between the pages of a book, but I found myself enjoying MAELSTROM much more than I expected.  The there is plenty of action without it being dragged out too much and there’s enough plot to keep non-action people like me reading. 

Dedicated thriller-readers will enjoy every action-packed page of MAELSTROM.  It is a promising debut novel from Michael MacConnell. 

MAELSTROM is a 2008 Ned Kelly nominee for Best First Novel.

Michael MacConnell is Australian and lives on the Central Coast of New South Wales.  He has a degree in International Relations, History and Ancient History and currently works in New South Wales law enforcement. His official website is http://www.michaelmacconnell.com/