Serial Killer  by Perry Martin

I had high hopes going into this book. The story had its ups and downs. Overall, it was an okay read, a little disappointing given the premise and my hopes for it. The underlying themes are vengeance and justice. There is also a smidgen of redemption thrown in for two of the characters.

The story starts slowly. Mainly because the author employs telling rather than showing. A rookie mistake. Overall, the novel suffered from a lack of developmental editing. We get an info dump on all the main characters in the first fifty or so pages. I would have preferred, especially with the serial killer, learning about the characters as the story went on. About halfway through, Mr. Martin gets more in the showing groove and the story moves along well. There’s an occasional info dump, some more telling where showing would have been better, and several point of view violations, but not enough to stop me from reading.

The story is about Los Angeles detective Tommy Brigham. When he was a child a serial killer dubbed The Bodybuilder killed his father. Tommy becomes a cop in the hopes of tracking down his father’s killer. Eighteen years after his father’s death, The Bodybuilder reemerges, and the hunt is on.

About page one-fifty, this story takes an odd turn. One that almost puts the book into the speculative realm for me. I don’t believe in the stuff this book ends up relying on to catch The Bodybuilder. It definitely was not expected and made for an interesting story.

The ending is exciting, but predictable. That’s okay, because it’s the ending I was rooting for.

The book is long for an unknown writer writing what is supposed to be a suspense novel. And because of the serial killer’s point of view, and the serial killer telling us what he’s going to do and then doing it, the suspense is drained from the book. The book could have been much tighter and more suspenseful if The Bodybuilder had remained a mysterious entity. His point of view added nothing to the story.

There is a lot of profanity. Some sexual scenes, but not overly graphic. The violence is muted. Nothing technically wrong jumped out at me.

My rating for this is three stars and I’ll rank it 12^th for this year so far.

1. Rooms by James L. Rubart
2. The First Lady by Ed Gorman
3. Every Dead Thing by John Connolly
4. I’ll Be Seeing You by Mary Higgins Clark
5. In Darkness Cast by Jonathan Shuerger
6. Several Deaths Later by Ed Gorman
7. Citadel (Palladium Wars Book 3) by Marko Kloos
8. Redemption by Deborah J. Ledford
9. Death of a Messenger by Robert McCaw
10. The Little Grave by Carolyn Arnold
11. Barrier Island by John D. MacDonald
12. Serial Killer by Perry Martin
13. Jake of All Trades by A.T. Mahon
14. Fireplay by Steve P. Vincent
15. Wrong Place Wrong Time by David P. Perlmutter
16. Nowhere Safe by Kate Bold
17. The Bone Key Curse by Mike Scantlebury
18. Run for Your Life by C.M. Sutter

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