Crime-fiction authors who specialize in serial killers have a tough row to hoe these days. They have to compete with the frightening acts of actual killers as reported in the news (and thus, push the graphic violence in their works to a level closer to horror fiction), or else struggle to create a murderer who is something more than just another Hannibal Lecter. Cody McFadyen has fought this battle since his debut novel, SHADOW MAN. And as THE DARKER SIDE — his third, now out in paperback — shows, he hasn’t given up the fight yet.
FBI homicide investigator Smokey Barrett, the star of McFadyen’s previous novels, is summoned away from her Los Angeles home base to the colder climate of Washington, D.C., to examine the body of a murder victim. The victim is the only child of a prominent congressman who is a sure shot for his party’s presidential nomination. But that is only one of the reasons why the bureau chief sent for Barrett.
The other has to do with a secret the victim held that could destroy the congressman’s political career. So Barrett pulls her team of co-investigators out of Southern California and together they assemble the pieces of the victim’s life and recent activities, while also constructing a profile of the killer. Before long, she learns that the murderer intends to target another victim and kill again, and has left at least one unintended dead body in the process.
McFadyen takes every opportunity to bring backstory and depth to Barrett and the rest of his cast. And Barrett’s past is, we learn, particularly gruesome. As a result, his characters act and sound nothing less than authentic. But for all this effort, the novel is still, at heart, another cat-and-mouse chase after another twisted, morbid serial killer, with plenty of shocking violence to keep things from getting dull.
It’s not so much a case of “read one, read them all,” but rather the simple, inevitable fact that stories about serial killers can’t help but follow a pattern that, after all these years and countless other novels, has become predictable.
Still, if such stories are your preference, McFadyen is certainly among its more talented practitioners. And you are certain to be pleased with THE DARKER SIDE. —Alan Cranis
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• ABANDONED by Cody McFadyen
Related posts:
- Abandoned
- The Darker Mask: Heroes from the Shadows
- BOOK WHORE >> 6.20.06
- The Other Side of Silence
- The Serial Killers Club
