Book Notices | Killer by Stephen Carpenter

Stephen Carpenter, Killer

Amazon   I love the main storyline of this book. Jack Rhodes is the author of a bestselling series of crime novels that focus on the murders of a mysterious serial killer. The killer has a gruesome M.O. that involves the beheading of his victims' corpses and the amputation of their hands. Jack's story starts when a corpse is found with eery similarities to the victim in his first book. It might have been a copycat killing if it weren't that the real-life murder pre-dated the book's publication. So, trouble ensues, and it's a good story. The real-life killer's story alternates with Jack's. We learn about the abuse he suffered as a kid and how he came to find solace in the murder and mutilation of a series of women. This part I didn't like very much. I think it may have detracted from the book to let us know fairly early on that Jack was not in fact guilty of murder--he might have been, had the story played out differently, or his guilt or innocence might have been ambiguous. So we know that there's a real killer out there, and somehow that cheapens the story a bit. There remains a mystery--how did Jack come to be writing the books he writes, which seem to have real-life parallels, but that question is answered fully by the book's end. (I had initially thought that Jack would wind up on the run and trying to clear his name in the book's sequel, but I was wrong.) On the whole a good read, but I think it could have been better.