REVIEWED BY: LINDA TONIS
MEMBER OF THE PARANORMAL ROMANCE REVIEW TEAM
Detective Sergeant Richard “Rick” McCoy of the Australian Police Department is struggling to deal with the fact that his wife discovered he cheated and threw him out leaving him missing both his wife and five year old daughter Amy. Rick knew that he was to blame for his marriage falling apart but when he is assigned to a murder of a woman found in pieces in a suitcase in the rubbish dump he has no idea how his life will change.

This is not the typical story of who done it but it is a story told in detail by the serial killer himself. The killer’s dad was a butcher whose wife left him and her son when he was just five. As a young boy he would watch as his father butchered meat and found himself fascinated by the sight of blood but just before his twelfth birthday he discovered his mother didn’t leave but was lying dead inside his dad’s freezer and his dad was lying in a pool of blood after killing himself. In spite of the fact that his dad beat him, he loved him but now he was put into an orphanage where his dad’s beatings were nothing compared to what he suffered there.

When his uncle finally took guardianship of him he learned what real abuse was because his uncle was a pervert and a homosexual who used him till he was eighteen. Instead of trying to go back to the orphanage he chose to stay with the monster he knew and not risk finding himself with a worse one.

Rick is trying to find the killer but there are no clues, no fingerprints, nothing to lead them to him. The only good thing that happened for him was he was reunited with his wife and child and this time was determined to change and be the husband his wife deserved. As time went by the case was cold but the killer was far from done and a finger is sent to Rick at the station with a note threatening to remove a body part every two days if Rick didn’t catch him, the note is signed PPP. The note was addressed to Rick personally and in time his connection with the killer would be revealed, but not by me.

Patricia Holmes a forensic psychologist is enlisted to help and she seems to have an uncanny insight into the killer but more are dead and they are no closer to catching him. This story is not for the weak of heart because some of the very explicit violence can be disturbing to say the least. The hunt for the killer is done so well that I could not put the book down. Although this is fiction it is scary in the fact that we know that monsters such as this exist and we have had our fair share in the United States.

I was hooked from the first page and watched as the killer was tormented his entire life and although I found myself feeling sorry for him at times I don’t believe that how you grew up is a cause for what you become when you are an adult. I can’t wait for the next book in the series and hopefully the wait won’t be too long.