Book Reviews by Elizabeth A. White

…the killing is easy. It’s the getting away with it that’s a bit more problematic. – The Commissioner

The job of a sports league’s commissioner, while not easy, is relatively straightforward. Generally speaking, they oversee the teams and competition, deal with administrative details and rules governing league play, and generally seek to ensure the health and success of their league. The commissioner in author Dani Amore’s newest book is no different. Well, except that he’s not in charge of the NBA, NFL or some other league you’re familiar with; no, he’s commissioner of The Killing League.

Like any other professional sports league, The Commissioner has recruited only the best of the best to participate. It just so happens that all the players in The Killing League are active serial killers, and The Commissioner has devised a single elimination style tournament for them to test their skills. Each person will be assigned a specific target to kill per round of play, with the targets’ level of difficulty increasing the deeper into the tournament the players get. If you don’t get your target – or they get you – you’re eliminated.

And so, players with monikers like Blue Blood, The Messiah, Florence Nightmare, and The Butcher, among others, are turned loose across the country, each determined to win the grand prize: a shot at renowned FBI profiler Wallace Mack, and a woman named Nicole, who escaped from and killed the serial killer who abducted her three years ago. Of course, Mack didn’t get to be renowned based on his good looks, and Nicole has dedicated her life to two things since her ordeal: becoming a chef and martial arts. Mack quickly realizes what’s going on, and the only place Nicole’s better with a knife than in the kitchen is in the dojo. Game on. (more…)

“It was believed that only the death of someone young and without sin could appease the bad moon.” – Professor Reid

Along with the rest of the world, on July 20, 1969, the residents of Perry Hollow, Pennsylvania were transfixed by the images of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. One in particular, young Charlie Olmstead, was so overcome with excitement he begged his dad to let him go outside to look at the moon, convinced he’d be able to see Armstrong up there.

His father relented and young Charlie peddled off into the night on his bike, never to be seen again. A subsequent search turned up Charlie’s badly battered bike at the base of a local waterfall, and it was concluded by the police that Charlie had suffered a similar fate, his body washed away. A tragedy, but just an accident.

Forty years later Eric Olmstead, just an infant at the time his older brother disappeared, returns to Perry Hollow to tend to his mother in her dying days. Her final request of Eric: Find him. Find your brother. Apparently his mother always believed Charlie was kidnapped, and feeling the obligation to at least make a token effort to fulfill her request, Eric hires private investigator Nick Donnelly, whose foundation is dedicated to solving cold-cases.

In addition to being a former Pennsylvania State Police investigator, Donnelly is also specifically familiar with Perry Hollow, having previously worked with Perry Hollow Police Chief Kat Campbell on a serial killing investigation (Death Notice). Nick looks Kat up when he gets to town, and together they meet with Eric, who has discovered something interesting while cleaning out his mother’s house – a board containing a map of the state with six locations marked in red, each accompanied by a clipping from a newspaper detailing a missing child. (more…)

“Listen as if your life depended on it because you’ve entered a very strange and murky world, and things won’t be the same for you again…” – Frank Castle

Detective Chief Inspector Frank Castle knows what he’s talking about, having descended deep down into a strange and murky world 28 long years ago. When he was still a young officer Castle was involved in the hunt for the “Woodlands Killer,” so named because of the location the horribly mutilated victims were found.

Though Castle was convinced the killer was a man named Karl Black, not only could Castle not gather enough evidence to have Black arrested, but Black was able to play mind games with Castle that had devastating consequences. Determined to prove Black was the killer, Castle spiraled into an obsession that cost him his marriage, a great deal of respect among his colleagues, and very nearly his sanity.

The “Woodlands Killer” was never caught.

Now, 28 years later, a new series of killings are occurring that mimic those from long ago. His colleagues think it the work of a copycat, but Castle isn’t so sure. Especially not with Karl Black still in the area, now running a sinister cult and every bit as willing to jump back into playing mind games with Castle. This time, however, Castle isn’t alone in his pursuit of Black. His young partner, DI Jackie Stone, is ready and willing to help Castle tackle the case. But as Castle sees Stone starting to fall into the same pattern of obsession and self-destruction he went through Castle is forced to make a tough choice: pursue Black at all costs, or save Stone – and himself – from a descent into the depths of madness? (more…)

He had been at it so long and taken so many girls that the details of all but the most recent kidnappings had begun to merge together into a kind of delicious, nostalgic stew.
- Martin Krall

If you had a chance to save someone’s life, to be a hero, would you do it even if you knew your actions would have disastrous consequences for your own family? Or could you knowingly allow a horrific fate to befall a young woman without doing anything to intervene?

Bill Ferguson didn’t have time to consider the answer to that question before his hand was forced and he made a decision that drastically altered the lives of two young women, one of them his own daughter.

While sitting in a rest stop along I-90 on one of his runs between the hardware shops he owns, Ferguson notices an abduction in process. Unfortunately, he’s the only one who appears to realize what’s happening. Acting on adrenaline and instinct, Ferguson pulls the gun he’s licensed to carry on the would-be kidnapper, forcing him to abandon the abduction.

The young woman is saved, Ferguson’s a hero, and all’s right with the world. Right? Wrong. (more…)

Reality check: The success of my business plan involves doing business with organized crime. – Darby Stansfield

Chop Suey is what would happen if you threw Glengarry Glen Ross and Office Space in a blender. Then added a serial killer. And Triads.

Telecommunications salesman Darby Stansfield is desperate. Having hit a bad stretch with his sales, he’s been put on notice he’s got six months to get his numbers headed in the right direction again or he’ll be fired.

Problem is, Darby doesn’t have any good leads. The one decent client he had was stolen out from under him by another salesman, leaving Darby with nothing but one-sale, dead end, mom-and-pop clients.

When a conversation with Mr. Fu, the owner of his favorite Chinese restaurant, brings up the subject of Triads inspiration strikes… he will tap into a previously untapped source of clientele and become a telecommunications specialist for organized crime. Darby will help the “organized” get organized.

Knowing he needs a bit of room to operate without being too scrutinized by the home office in San Francisco, Darby decides to branch out. To Hong Kong. Following up on information obtained from Mr. Fu, Darby actually manages to connect with the Fan Gang Triad, sell them on his plan, set up a fake toy company as a front for the operation, place a massive first order, and before you know it he’s on his way back to the top of the leaderboard. Coffee time, right? Wrong. (more…)

“As he drove to work, it occurred to him that he should have taken the dog for a walk before he left. Oh well. It was far from the first mess he’d have to clean up in that basement.” – Charlie Stanlon

Forty-two years old, painfully shy, single, stuck working a dead-end cubicle job, Charlie Stanlon lives a pretty boring life as far as the world around him is concerned. Which is the way Charlie likes it.

What his coworkers don’t know is that when they head out for drinks after work, Charlie heads out to find his next victim. Charlie is a serial killer.

There’s an invariable pattern to his life that Charlie sticks with, a set of rules he lives by to keep himself from getting caught, and that strict discipline allows him to conduct regular hunts for victims and satisfy his urges while also keeping him under control and out of prison.

But a funny thing happens on a hunt one night. He finds an injured dog and, against his better judgment, takes it home. From that point forward Charlie’s life begins to change in ways he couldn’t previously have imagined possible.

Kutter represents a bit of a change of pace for Strand. Whereas his usual m.o. is to take a seriously twisted situation and find ways to make it funny, in Kutter Strand takes a seemingly goofy premise – despicable serial killer adopts adorable little doggie – and proceeds to explore with stark realism and minimal humor the way that scenario would most likely really turn out.

Though Strand’s outstanding novel Dweller also has minimal humor and deals with such serious topics as the complicated nature of relationships and loyalties, it can’t be taken too seriously given one of the principal characters in the story is a monster. There is no such reality break in Kutter. Stanlon is an unapologetically reprehensible killer, and while his interaction with Kutter (what he names the dog) does change him, it’s not in a warm-fuzzy, movie-of-the-week, feel good kind of way.

For my money, Kutter is easily the most perfect blending of dark (really dark) humor, horror, and psychological suspense that Strand has produced to date (Pressure runs a damn close second). To that end, Strand also thinks that Kutter is “the work of mine that comes the closest to achieving what I set out to accomplish when I started writing.”

Previously only available as a limited edition hardcover, Kutter has recently been combined in one trade paperback edition with Michael McBride’s novella Remains (On May 21st, 2008, seven graduate students in Religious Studies set out from the University of Colorado in search of God. Armed with only their faith and the scriptures, they traveled to the western slope of the Rocky Mountains. None of them were ever heard from again.). This new edition, titled The Mad and the Macabre, is available from Dark Regions Press.

Coming tomorrow: A review of The Sinister Mr. Corpse.

“There’s no need to mourn the dead. They have no worries. They can’t hurt anyone. They have no deadlines or commitments weighing them down. Don’t mourn the dead. Mourn the living.” – Walter Bendix.

Mourn the Living, the second book in author Henry Perez’s series featuring newspaper reporter Alex Chapa, finds Alex juggling several complicated issues dealing with both the living and the dead.

Recently divorced, Alex’s vacation with his visiting young daughter is interrupted when he is called by his editor and informed that the paper’s lead reporter, Jim Chakowski, has been killed in an explosion at his home.

Though written off by the police and fire departments as an accident caused by a gas leak and faulty wiring, Alex’s poking around causes him to believe it was not an accident at all. It turns out Chakowski had been investigating a series of seemingly unrelated murders strung out over numerous years, in several different cities.

As Alex picks up the investigation it becomes apparent not only were the previous murders related, but that the killer has made Alex’s city his newest hunting ground. Before he knows it Alex is doing more than chasing a story, he’s chasing a killer; one who’s also chasing him.

As author Henry Perez noted in his guest blog on Monday, Alex is very much a flawed character. His obsession with his job was the major factor in his marriage’s collapse, he doesn’t spend enough time with his daughter, his temper tends to get him in trouble with both his editor and the police, and his new relationship is on the verge of going the way of his marriage… for the same reasons.

Yet, it’s precisely those things that make Alex so believable. Perez has created in Alex Chapa a series lead who the average reader can actually imagine knowing, or even see in themselves. Add to that wonderfully rich supporting characters, race against the clock plots, and Perez’s insider’s knowledge of the workings of the newspaper industry and you’ve got a must read new crime fiction series.

Mourn The Living is available from Pinnacle Books (ISBN: 978-0786020331).

Being partially to blame for your own therapist’s death is a tough thing to deal with, especially because you don’t have a therapist anymore to help you through it. Sometimes irony just kicks you in the teeth like that. – John Wayne Cleaver

Yes, John Wayne Cleaver is back, dark humor intact even if his grasp on Mr. Monster is not. In his first outing, I Am Not A Serial Killer, we learned that fifteen-year-old John had been diagnosed by his therapist as a sociopath, and self-diagnosed as a (potential) serial killer.

The dark side of John’s psyche, which he calls Mr. Monster, is always just below the surface, struggling to escape while John tries desperately to keep it under wraps. That struggle became decidedly more difficult after John confronted and killed a serial killer who was stalking his town in I Am Not A Serial Killer… Mr. Monster’s now had a taste of what he wants.

As if trying to keep your homicidal impulses under control isn’t enough for a teenager to deal with, Mr. Monster finds John juggling a host of additional challenges: a mother who knows “what” John is but refuses to discuss it; an absent father; an older sister in an abusive relationship (boy does Mr. Monster want a piece of that guy); and an attempted first romance (made extremely awkward by the violent thoughts Mr. Monster has about the object of John’s attention). Oh, there are also the horribly tortured dead bodies that start turning up around town, and the FBI agent who seems a little too interested in John’s thoughts on the murders.

Mr. Monster is told from John’s point of view, as was I Am Not A Serial Killer, that first-person narrative being absolutely crucial for the reader to be privy to the war raging in John between his desire to be normal and Mr. Monster’s desire to be set free. And what a war it is. While I Am Not A Serial Killer certainly had its moments, the violence is exponentially increased in Mr. Monster. The descriptions of the damage inflicted upon the victims of the town’s new serial killer spare no detail, and the showdown depicted in the last quarter of the book between John and the killer – and between John and Mr. Monster – borders on the uncomfortable.

Rather than being gratuitous, however, author Dan Wells has developed John Wayne Cleaver with such nuance that the reader understands pulling any punches when describing the brutality John both faces and wants to commit would not be honest to the character. Wells is certainly not afraid to go places the reader may not necessarily want to, and has obviously done a tremendous amount of research into the psychology of serial killers. That John has done the same makes his level of self-awareness and struggle with Mr. Monster incredibly sympathetic… despite the fact his seriously twisted fantasies will creep you the hell out. It’s a nifty balancing act for Wells to have pulled off.

You don’t have to have read I Am Not A Serial Killer to enjoy Mr. Monster, but you’re going to want to read it so go ahead and pick them both up if you haven’t already. Just don’t start either book unless you’re prepared to finish it in one sitting… and don’t read them late at night.

For Chief Campbell, it was probably the mother of all bad days. And she didn’t know the half of it yet. Once she did, her day was going to go from bad to downright miserable. – Death Notice

As Chief of Police in sleepy Perry Hollow, Pennsylvania, writing speeding tickets and investigating the occasional robbery is about as challenging as Kat Campbell’s job gets.

That changes in dramatic fashion when one of the town’s residents is found murdered, left alongside a country road in a homemade coffin, lips sewn shut, drained of blood and partially embalmed.

Knowing the investigation is beyond her two person department’s capabilities, Campbell welcomes the arrival of Lt. Nick Donnelly of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Investigation. It seems the method of killing is similar to that of the “Betsy Ross” serial killer – so named because of the killer’s creative sewing skill – Donnelly’s task force has been chasing for over a year.

Complicating matters, the obituary writer for the Perry Hollow Gazette, Henry Goll, was faxed a death notice for the murder victim… date and time stamped prior to the murder.

Himself a bit of a mystery, his scars from a tragic auto accident and reclusive behavior having earned him the nickname Henry Ghoul, Henry finds himself a reluctant participant in the investigation when additional death notices from the killer are sent to him, each foretelling the next victim’s time of death to be a mere 30 minutes from the time Henry receives them. It’s literally a race against the clock to catch the killer.

The writing in Death Notice perfectly captures the feel of a small, rural town. Author Todd Ritter forsakes overly wordy prose in favor of straightforward storytelling that the reader can slip right into like a comfy old sweater, and the characters are so richly drawn readers will feel as though they’ve known the residents of Perry Hollow forever. Even touches such as Campbell being a single mother to a son with Down Syndrome and Donnelly having lost a sister to a serial killer – things that could be clumsy and clichéd in the wrong hands – are handled in such matter-of-fact fashion that they blend seamlessly into the story Ritter expertly weaves.

Ritter also manages to work several, believable, just when you thought it was over it’s not twists into the story before ultimately bringing things to a scorching conclusion, and the final showdown with the killer involves one of the most squirm-inducing sequences I’ve read in quite some time.

Though the story is brought to a satisfying conclusion and there is no obvious set-up for a sequel left hanging, there is room for Ritter to take the characters in that direction should he so choose. I, for one, certainly hope he does. Death Notice may be Ritter’s first novel, but whether he gives us a sequel or something entirely fresh you can rest assured it won’t be his last.

“The worst pain in our lives comes from the mistakes we refuse to acknowledge – the things we’ve done that are so out of harmony with who we are that we can’t bear to look at them.” – Mark Mellery

Former detective Dave Gurney is a man trying desperately to be in harmony with himself. Recently retired from the NYPD as their top man in homicide, he and his wife, Madeleine, have retired to an idyllic little town in upstate New York.

Try as he might, however, he just can’t completely detach himself from his deep-seated desire to solve puzzles and figure out what makes killers tick. And so it is a double-edged sword that lands in his lap when an old classmate, Mark Mellery, seeks him out for help with some mysterious, threatening letters he’s been receiving.

The letters are all in the form of poems that set forth a puzzle, the first of which also included a “game” – think of any number between 1 and 1000 and then open the small envelope included. Mellery was understandably freaked out when after picking 658, he thought at random, he opened the envelope to find written on the paper inside it… 658.

As the letters are thinly veiled threats against Mellery’s life, Gurney tries to convince him to take them to the police. Mellery refuses and makes Gurney promise that he will not either. When Mellery is brutally murdered in his home a few days later, however, Gurney has no choice but to take all the information he has to local law enforcement. When more people are killed, including a police officer, Gurney is reluctantly invited to join the investigation as a consultant.

While Think of a Number certainly has a compelling serial killer plot, it is at heart a character driven story. Gurney is a rigid, overly-logical man who, despite being aware of his shortcomings, is compelled to go again down the same path that has already once brought his marriage to the verge of breaking. Proud of his ability to find answers where others can’t, Gurney sees the killer as being “as logical as he is pathological” and he simply cannot resist trying to best the killer by solving his puzzles… no matter the potential personal cost.

With his somewhat sterile approach to virtually everything Gurney is a character it can take a little to warm up to. Much of the story involves his inner reflections on the motivation for his seemingly self-destructive behavior, and as such the storyline may move a bit slow in places for some. However, the puzzles author John Verdon has created for the killer, the ability to pull off some of which seems to border on the supernatural, are tremendously fun to try and figure out along with Gurney.

So, if you’re up for a book that will not only entertain you but will also make you dust off your “little grey cells” and actually think, Think of a Number is definitely a book you should pick up.