Review by New York Times Review
COVER YOUR EYES - this one's really nasty. Not even cookie-baking moms and their innocent children are spared in THE KILLING LESSONS (St. Martin's, $25.99), Saul Black's thriller about an interstate manhunt for a killer whose modus operandi is so bizarre even his own accomplice can't figure it out. Xander King and his browbeaten sidekick, Paulie Stokes, have been doing their filthy business for the past three years, abducting women in one state and usually leaving their mutilated remains in another. The death count is up to seven and climbing, according to Valerie Hart, the San Francisco cop who's lead detective on the case. But by the time the killers make their way to the isolated farmhouse in Colorado where Rowena Cooper and her two children live, Xander is starting to unravel. He's unable to complete his peculiar ritual of leaving a foreign object in each victim, and although he doesn't realize it, Rowena's 10-year-old daughter has escaped. Despite the almost shockingly good writing, it's too easy to pick the book apart. For one thing, it feels researched, which wasn't the case when this British author, writing under his real name, Glen Duncan, produced a stylish horror novel called "The Last Werewolf." It's fun to spot a sly acknowledgment of one obvious reference work, "The Silence of the Lambs," embedded in the story. But the alcoholic, obsessive, self-destructive detective is no less a cliché because she's a woman, and the graphic brutality directed at women who bear no resemblance to the maternal figure who made a monster of Xander evokes torture scenes straight out of "Criminal Minds." And while Valerie's detective skills are impressive (watch for the witty thought process that takes her from Christmas shopping to Russell Crowe to the true identity of Xander King), you still have to wonder why the F.B.I. isn't all over a case of interstate kidnapping. But even when the plot goes into melodramatic overdrive, it's impossible not to be swept away by its propulsive momentum. The appeal of this dark and intensely disquieting book isn't entirely visceral either. By shifting the narrative point of view, Black allows us to peer into the depths of his many richly developed characters, from the surprisingly complex killers and their dedicated hunters to the supporting players who pop up only to be ruthlessly disposed of. AFTER KNOCKING AROUND Europe in his last book, Lee Child's wide-bodied hero, Jack Reacher, is back where he belongs in MAKE ME (Delacorte, $28.99), bumming around the country and checking out the infinite weirdness of the American heartland. There's a lot of weird going on in Mother's Rest, the intriguingly named agricultural town that greets Reacher when he obeys a directive from what he calls his "lizard brain" and hops off a train in the middle of nowhere. Everyone from the motel clerk to the counterman at the diner immediately takes Reacher for someone else - possibly a colleague of Michelle Chang, a former F.B.I. operative who's in town looking for a missing colleague - and a neighborhood watch is set up to keep an eye on both of them. This would be comical, if it weren't so sinister; but Child has always been sensitive to the air of menace clinging to lonesome towns on railway lines that only run from here to there, dropping off travelers who promptly disappear. Once the obligatory out-of-town action scenes are out of the way and Reacher comes up for air from his steamy affair with Chang, the story returns to Mother's Rest to expose the unspeakably creepy things that go on in the small towns you see when you look out the window of the speeding train that's taking you away from all that. DONALD SMITH'S exceptional first novel, THE CONSTABLE'S TALE (Pegasus, $25.95), is a revelatory look at colonial America, as seen through the eyes of a volunteer constable in North Carolina. Harry Woodyard is a man of strong principles, some acquired by observing the "Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour." Rule No. 110 - "Labour to keep alive in your Breast that Little Spark of Celestial fire Called Conscience" - serves Harry well when the Campbell family is murdered. An old Indian named Comet Elijah, found camping in the woods, is jailed for the massacre, and given the prejudices of the Indian-hating sheriff, Harry is the old man's only hope. In unmasking a villain, the investigation also provides insights into the surprisingly worldly ways of our colonial ancestors. THE BEST AMATEUR sleuths are often social misfits like Patrick Fort, the appealing hero of Belinda Bauer's deliciously macabre mystery, RUBBERNECKER (Atlantic Monthly, $24). Though Patrick has Asperger's syndrome, the results of his biology and zoology exams are off the chart, winning him a place at Cardiff University. Despite having zero social skills, Patrick is a whiz in the anatomy lab, so far ahead of his class that he alone realizes the cadaver on his dissection table didn't die of natural causes. In a parallel narrative sizzling with tension, Sam Galen, a fully conscious but paralyzed patient in a coma ward, silently rages at his inability to tell anyone that he's seen another patient being murdered. In a tour de force of plotting and writing, Bauer not only establishes a bond between Patrick and Sam but renders their separate voices with beauty and compassion.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 23, 2015]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* San Francisco detective Valerie Hart is the lead on a serial-killer case that has her obsessing like Ahab on the trail of Moby-Dick. The killer's ever-changing MO defies profiling and detection, with the only connection among the crimes being his baffling penchant for placing seemingly unrelated objects in his victims' bodies. But one evening as she's obsessively reviewing video of the latest victim's final hours, Valerie spots someone who prompts her interest. Meanwhile, the killer is still hunting and has left a young girl fighting for her life in an isolated Colorado cabin. Valerie, the killer, and young Nell each get their pieces of the narrative, which highlights the race toward a climax that has every indication of ending badly. Yes, all of the serial-killer staples are accounted for: self-destructing detective, slippery killer, and sympathetic future victims. But Black, a pseudonym for acclaimed dark-fantasy author Glen Duncan (The Last Werewolf, 2011), twists the formula with a killer who defies the coldly calculating criminal mastermind archetype, an unblinking willingness to off characters he's convinced readers to like, and a hokum-free thread of reawakening lost souls. A serial-murder tale in league with the best of Lauren Beukes and Chelsea Cain: that means must-read for those who like their psychological thrillers raw.--Tran, Christine Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
At the start of this exceptional police thriller from Black, the pseudonym of British author Glen Duncan (Hope), two armed men show up at an isolated farmhouse outside Ellinson, Colo., with fatal results for the Cooper family. Soon afterward, a San Francisco woman is found dead, raped and mutilated with a piece of a crystal unicorn inserted in her body. SFPD homicide detective Valerie Hart links this crime and another Bay Area slaying to a string of murders of women in several states across the western U.S., in each of which the killers-DNA evidence suggests there are two of them-embedded a strange object in the corpse. Meanwhile, Valerie is drinking too much and has a rotten love life while Carla York, the FBI special agent brought in as liaison, dislikes Valerie for unknown reasons and works to discredit her. The appearance of an old boyfriend, fellow cop Nick Blaskovich, whom Valerie dumped three years earlier, complicates matters further. Despite these distractions, persistent Valerie displays a real gift for uncovering and interpreting clues. Readers will hope she returns soon in another nail-biter. Agent: Jane Gelfman, Gelfman Schneider Literary Agents. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
For Nell Cooper life would never be the same again. The moment she found her mother on the kitchen floor and heard her whisper the words, "Run, they're still here," the safe world as she knew it ceased to exist. For the two killers, Nell's house was just a random stop on the road to completing a bloody list of macabre tasks. Det. Valerie Hart is obsessed with putting an end to this rampage and will stop at nothing to do it. Unfortunately, she will also have to work with her ex-fiancé, who recently rejoined the force, and figure out who's trying to sabotage her within the department. As the murder investigation heats up and the search for the killers becomes even more frantic, Valerie must also watch her own back. VERDICT Black (aka Glen Duncan, I Lucifer) has written a taut, smart thriller guaranteed to keep readers on the edge of their seats. Not to be missed.--Cynthia Price, Francis Marion Univ. Lib., -Florence, SC © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Ending the rampage of two sadistic serial killers may depend on a substance-abusing homicide detective facing an old lover and an unknown nemesis in this raw and utterly readable thriller. Behind the nom de plume is Glen Duncan (By Blood We Live, 2014, etc.), last seen spewing bloody ink in the wrap-up to his toothsome werewolves-and-vampires trilogy. In a different vein here, he cooks up mayhem among mortals, creating a duo from Of Mice and Men by way of Thomas Harris without the fava beans. Inspired by some horrific child abuse, Xander and Paulie are on a mission to rape, torture, and murder a certain number of women, aided by a serrated fishing knife, an iPad, and a combined IQ maybe in the high double-digits. Detective Valerie Hart leads a San Francisco team confronted with at least seven victims and zero clues. Black sets parallel narratives in motion when the latest murders send a teenage girl into hiding and a new potential victim hands the Hart team its first breakonce underway, the police work is crisp and convincing. Meanwhile, the former lover complicates Valerie's chilly, vodka-fueled efficiency while an FBI operative seems to lie behind several incidents undermining her. Compared with the explicit gore of the trilogy, there's some writerly restraint here amid much nastiness. But nasty it is, and it's made more so by the author's deep dives into the mind of a victim, especially when her terror is stoked by the iPad's gruesome video records. An especially fine piece of staging has the injured teen and the writer crippled by sciatica with whom she has taken refuge awaiting unlikely rescue on a dead-end road. Aficionados may fault Black for allowing the police at least one major oversight, but most readers will likely be too engrossed or happily grossed out to do anything but whip through the pages. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
