THE BRIDE COLLECTOR is the kind of thriller that accomplishes everything it sets out to do: Ted Dekker offers readers a gripping, fast-paced account of a deranged serial killer in action, and a blow-by-blow account of the FBI’s attempts to stop him. Drawing on the aid of patients at the Center for Wellness and Intelligence — which, as the director points out, is not a “mental institution,” but rather a center for challenged but highly intelligent people — hunk FBI agent Brad Raines tracks the mind and psychology of a serial killer who believes he is on a mission from God.
Thankfully, Dekker avoids the psychiatry trap that seems to flummox so many psycho-thriller authors, and does not go too far into detail on the variations between forms of psychoses, instead offering just a proper amount of information on the thought processes of both the killer and the savant patients tracking him.
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Following the success of ISIS, Douglas Clegg has not disappointed with NEVERLAND. This haunting novel — no pun intended — tells the story of a group of children on a family summer vacation on Gull Island. They form a kind of club, centering on an abandoned shack in the yard of their family’s retreat, no grown-ups allowed.
This simple concept forms the foundation of a waking nightmare, in which the children, led by the oddest of cousins, Sumter, begin praying to an unseen god, stealing and lying at the god’s command, and ultimately being making sacrifices. Each indiscretion builds, each theft larger than the last, each sacrifice worse than the previous, until Sumter’s imagination takes this imagined club — Neverland — out of the realm of the clubhouse and out over the entire island.
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Glenn Cooper’s BOOK OF SOULS adds to the growing number of titles that I have recently dubbed “THE DA VINCI CODE Fallout.” Like Dan Brown before him, Cooper draws on medieval history, church history and modern FBI/CIA/covert-operations drama to give readers a novel that somehow manages to link William Shakespeare, John Calvin, Winston Churchill, Nostradamus, the Catholic Church, the Church of England, the FBI and the CIA; it doesn’t work as well as one might hope.
SOULS begins with Will Piper, a recently force-retired FBI agent and new father. His history of drinking and womanizing, and a constant selfish attitude make him, unfortunately, a rather unlikable main character. When an old case comes back to haunt him in the form of a dying man seeking answers about a mysterious book — one known to hold the birth and death dates of everyone in the world — Piper travels to England to uncover the tome’s origins, leaving death and destruction in his wake.
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EX-HEROES adds to the growing ranks of post-apocalyptic zombie books filling the shelves these days. While it does not bring an entirely fresh voice to this popular genre, Peter Clines’ novel is not unoriginal, and the premise is certainly an interesting one.
Set in Los Angeles after zombies have taken over the city — and, as far as we can tell, the rest of the world — EX-HEROES focuses on a group of superheroes protecting a small colony of human survivors, struggling to stay alive and make a future for themselves in zombie-land. Holed up inside Paramount studios, aka “the Mount,” the small population relies on limited ammunitions and seemingly limited powers to stave off continued undead attacks.
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THE BLACK CAT is Martha Grimes’ 23rd Richard Jury mystery, but readers new to the author or inspector need not fear, as picking up a new one is a bit like picking up a new Miss Marple: Yes, the inspector has a background, but, no, that background is not essential to understanding the story at hand.
The similarities between Grimes and Agatha Christie don’t end there. While I would be hesitant to tag any author a modern-day Christie — could anyone really fill that role? — Grimes comes about as close as I’ve seen, pairing British culture and locales with a true whodunit storyline. Unlike many of the “mysteries” published in recent years, this is not a political thriller, there are no conspiracies, and local police do not resort to FBI, SWAT teams and all-out shoot-outs.
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