Fascinating First Novel

Abigail Ellery Hathaway is a survivor. She’s also a Woodbury, Massachusetts, police officer with secrets. In The Vanishing Season by Joanna Schaffhausen (Minotaur/St Martin’s Press, December 2017), everyone has secrets. But not everyone is a survivor.

This is the story that won the MWA First Novel competition, and it’s easy to see why. It doesn’t read like a first novel. The characters are fully developed, the plot twists are foreshadowed but practically invisible, and the only speed bump in this mile-a-minute thrill ride is a lovable dog named Speed Bump.

Reed Markham is the disgraced FBI profiler who once rescued 14-year-old Abigail from certain death at the hands of a serial killer. Although Markham literally wrote the book on child abduction by serial murderers, one of his secrets is his wife really helped him write that book. Now she’s divorcing him, he’s fighting a possible addiction to alcohol, the FBI suspended him for making a mistake that cost a girl her life, and he’s not the hero everyone thinks he is.

When Abby grew up, she moved from Chicago to Boston, changed her name to Ellery (a tip of the hat to Ellery Queen?), became a cop, and moved to Woodbury where she thinks no one knows her past. Although Abby/Ellie hides her scars from prying eyes, she’s sure someone stalks her who has somehow discovered her identity.

Every year for the past three, a Woodbury resident disappears on Abby’s birthday. Every year, for the past three, Ellie receives a mysterious birthday card. Is it a coincidence?

With her birthday nigh and  Ellie still can’t convince Chief Sam Parker or Detective Jimmy Tipton there’s a serial killer loose in Woodbury, she goes over their heads and asks Reed Markham for help.

Everyone becomes suspect as  body parts and secrets are revealed. Was Abby so traumatized as a child that she’s now a killer herself? Is philandering Chief Parker so infatuated with Ellie that he’s stalking her? Is bumbling detective Tipton covering up his own crimes? Inquiring minds want to know.

Well-written and riveting, The Vanishing Season is a fascinating first novel by a writer to watch.

The Devil's Only Friend by Dan Wells is worth reading

Dan Wells is a monstrous writer. And, although he says, “I am not a serial killer,” I don’t believe him.

He has the same tendencies all serial killers have: he’s obsessive, compulsive, may be sociopathic, and he has a vivid imagination. I have been accused of the same tendencies, so I know of which I speak.

But Dan Wells created rules to keep the serial killer trapped inside him. He doesn’t harm animals, does not start fires, says nice things about people instead of thinking bad thoughts, does not think of people as “it,” refrains from following or stalking people, does not make threats, and leaves when threatened. Those are good rules, really. But they are hard to keep.

John Wayne Cleaver, Wells’ teenaged protagonist, has the first name of John Wayne Gacy and the same last name of an instrument of death (which is also the same last name as a fictional television character from the long-forgotten past). Meat the Cleavers (heh heh). They’re a nice normal family (heh heh). Except for their son (heh heh).

I’m Not a Serial Killer and the subsequent Mr. Monster and I don’t Want to Kill You read like young adult novels. That’s probably because the protagonist is a young adult still in high school, there is no gratuitous or explicit sex anywhere in the novels, and graphic descriptions of actual violence is kept to the bare minimum. The conflicts are those of a typical high school boy (demanding and over-protective mother, girls and other boys who think he’s too nerdy and anti-social—which he is because he’s a sociopath—an equally-nerdy best friend, and a hopeless crush on a girl named Brooke). Only John Wayne Cleaver doesn’t fantasize about bedding Brooke. He fantasizes about killing her.

And John Wayne Cleaver’s demons are real and not metaphorical.

T
he Hollow City (TOR Books, ISBN 978-0-7653-6871-3, $7.99, November 2013) reads as well as the John Wayne Cleaver trilogy and offers insights the other books do not. It’s worth a read. But it’s not the same as a John Wayne Cleaver novel without Cleaver himself.

Next of Kin is a tantalizing look at the new John Wayne Cleaver series that begins with The Devil’s Only Friend (TOR Books, ISBN 978-0765380678, $14.99, June 2015). This is a more grown-up John Wayne Cleaver (though still an impulsive teen), and Wells has also matured as an author with a few more books under his belt. Next of Kin is told from the viewpoint of Elijah Sexton, one of the demon monsters Cleaver now hunts. Author Wells deliberately makes Elijah, like Mr. Crowley, a sympathetic character. Elijah rejects his basic nature in order to recapture his humanity. Is John capable of doing the same?

Elijah Sexton reappears in The Devil’s Only Friend, only now we see Elijah through John Wayne Cleaver’s eyes. Cleaver has left Clayton for the big city (ok, not the Big Apple but a fictional mid-sized midwestern city) where he is part of an elite FBI team assigned to hunt and destroy demons. Brooke is still alive, but she is possessed by a demon. Brooke reveals that the demons are actually a group of 10,000 year old humans—called either the “Gifted” or “the Withered”, depending on how they view themselves—who each exchanged one element of their essential humanity for the promise of eternal life. They volunteered to give up being entirely human to gain the powers of a god.

The entire series is brilliant, and it’s extremely well-written. Who is the hunted and who is the hunter? What twists and turns will complicate John Wayne Cleaver’s life next? The Devil’s Only Friend is a fast-paced supernatural thriller worth reading.

Eeny Meeny by M. J. Arlidge

Eeny Meeny by M. J. Arlidge. NAL, June 2015.

            There’s nothing I like better than a fast-paced mystery. I like third-person narratives told from multiple viewpoints. I am always intrigued by moral dilemmas, and Arlidge toys with questions of conscience enough to hold my interest. Eeny Meeny is the kind of book you’ll either love or hate. It’s not great literature, but it is my kind of story.

Helen Grace is a Detective Inspector for the Southampton police department. British police procedurals aren’t much different than American. Helen’s supervisor is Detective Superintendent Whittaker. Detective Superintendents are similar to Captains in American police departments. Detective Inspectors (DI) are the equivalent of a lieutenant, Detective Sergeants (DS) are the same in both countries, and Detective Constables (DC) are comparable to plainclothes policemen. DS Mark Fuller is Helen’s assistant, and Mark has become an alcoholic since his divorce.

Guilt and shame and desperation play active roles throughout the book. People don’t play nice with other people, and Helen Grace’s job is to figure out motives for murder if she hopes to find the killer. This is a whodunit, and the only real clue is that the serial killer is a woman. Her MO is to isolate two people who know each other, trap them in a place they can’t escape from, phone them to tell them she will let one of them out if one shoots the other one, starve them nearly to death, and release the shooter only after he or she kills the other captive. There may or may not be a connection between the victims and Helen (she knows some of the victims personally). Is the killer targeting people close to Helen Grace? Why?

There are more than a few nasty complications to keep the story interesting. Helen is no saint, and she has more than a few skeletons hiding in her own closet dying to get out. The story is the kind of down and dirty little thriller I really enjoy reading. The chapters are short, the viewpoints shift from one character to another with almost every chapter, and the pace escalates as the high-stakes game plays out. No one escapes unscathed. The best the characters can hope for is to emerge alive at the end

Arlidge isn’t the most skilled writer, but the storyline is original and the prose readable and often gripping. Eeny Meeny is a cliffhanger with one cliff after another adding to the hurdles characters must surmount. Penguin is releasing four of Arlidge’s DI Grace tales later this year in paperback and digital editions. I intend to read them all.