The Collector by Fiona Cummins continues the story of the "Bone Collector" introduced in a previous novel which I haven't read. Brian Howley (the Night Man/Mr. Silver/the Collector) is a serial killer, and not just a serial killer, but one who collects physical anomalies. Ok. Evil serial killer thinks he has found an apprentice and an heir who will help him recapture the six-year-old boy who got away and who will appreciate his murders and fetish-like collection of oddities.
Young Saul Anguish (how's that for a name?) is an intriguing character, but it seems far-fetched to believe Howley could target a teenager and groom him as an apprentice in such a short time.
Saul has enough emotional and personal problems to make the corruption possible, but he does have a sense of right and wrong despite the complications in his life--and to pervert him completely in two or three days created a problem for me. Brian Howley's father had years to make his son, a captive audience, into a serial killer, so expecting a teenager to be converted overnight is a bit much to ask.
Strangely, the detective Etta Fizgerald, the protagonist of the first book, has a relatively small presence. She's important, but she doesn't have that much time in the plot. The children, Jakey and Clara, are sympathetically rendered.
The book had a lot of possibilities to be something more, but makes the bizarre and gruesome the main interest. (I just looked at the reviews on Goodreads, and they are all very positive. However, I'm not a fan of making grisly and macabre the basis of a plot.)
NetGalley/Kensington Books
Serial Killer. Dec. 18, 2018. Print length: 400 pages.
Description: The macabre discovery of a truck full of dead Chinese in southern Texas brings together again the American pathologist Margaret Campbell with Li Yan, the Beijing detective with whom she once shared a turbulent personal and professional relationship. Forced back into an uneasy partnership, they set out to identify the Snakehead who is behind the 100-million-dollar trade in illegal Chinese immigrants which led to the tragedy in Texas - only to discover that the victims were also unwitting carriers of a deadly cargo. Li and Margaret have a biological time-bomb of unimaginable proportions on their hands, and an indiscriminate killer who threatens the future of humankind.
I found the main characters a bit difficult to care about, not that I disliked them, I just wasn't really taken with them. The basic idea of the plot is a good one, but the way the virus was to be triggered was weird. Human trafficking is despicable, and obviously there is much more of it than I was aware of for most of my life; however, the fact that Li arrives from China to find the case involves his sister who has been trafficked for the sex trade is quite the coincidence.
Read in Oct.
NetGalley/Quercus
Mystery/Thriller. Jan. 8, 2019. Print length: 416 pages.
I'm impressed that you wrote your reviews even though these books sounded disappointing. I hate grisly plots though I've read a few.
ReplyDeleteThe reviews on Goodreads were almost uniformly positive, but despite some interesting elements this one couldn't overcome the problems I had with it. Sometimes I just want to put in a another opinion.
DeleteThat line by David Baldacci is very impressive, but I can't see liking that Fiona Cummins book either. I can deal with bizarre and gruesome in a book if there was something else to counter it, but there doesn't seem to be anything here to do that.
ReplyDeleteIt was one of those books where I kept finding myself questioning the plot. Cummins does a great job of making the children and their families sympathetic and touching, but the character of Howley was just too much. Saul, on the other hand, kept me wondering with his potential to go either way.
DeleteI guess not every book can be great. Sadly, sometimes good...or middling...is all we get. :)
ReplyDeleteYou've hit on it--"sometimes good..or middling...is all we get." Both books were OK, but only kind of middling. Since I enjoyed the The Lewis Trilogy by Peter May, I was expecting to like this one more.
DeleteGrisly and macabre make an intriguing element in a thriller but not as the core of the story. I think I'll probably skip The Collector.
ReplyDeleteI was certainly in the minority going by the Goodreads reviews. The Collector, however, wasn't my cup of tea even though I liked the way Cummins dealt with the families of the children and with Saul.
DeleteWhen one reads as much as you do there are bound to be a few middling titles along the way. Snake Head does sound pretty interesting to me, however, with the double whammy of trafficking and a possible epidemic.
ReplyDeleteThere are some interesting thoughts in the Snakehead book. The epidemic idea is, of course, a frightening possibility regardless of whether it comes from the southern border or through an airport. Scary!
DeleteI'm interested in the Peter May book but would definitely have to start with the first one in the series. Granted, I still haven't read all the books in his other series so I'd probably stick with those first.
ReplyDelete