20. Nine Elms by Robert Bryndza

#1 Kate Marshall
read on my iPhone (Kindle)
2019 Thomas & Mercer
392 pgs.
Adult murder mystery series
Finished 1/28/2020
Goodreads rating: 4.15 - 5701 ratings
My rating:  3.5
Setting: Contemporary England

First line/s:  "Detective Constable Kate Marshall was on the train home when her phone rang."

My comments:  This was an intricately told from two points of view - that of the good guy and that of the bad guy.  And this was a VERY bad guy, with clever accomplices and a particularly weird relationship with his mother.  Kate had been a cop when she first met Peter, another copy, and had even had a one-night stand with him before she disovered he was a notorious serial killer.  Now incarcerated in a hospital for the mentally and possibly insane, he, his mother, and a new wannabe create a plot to not only spring him from this high-security prison, but get revenge upon Kate.  The back-and-forth is interesting, but because I was reading it in spits and spurts, it did seem to drag a little.  If I'd read it in one long swoop or listened to it, it would've probably not seemed so draggy.  It was a really good story, twisted, dark, and particularly grizzly.  It was also the first in the series.  I do think that I will read the second.

Goodreads synopsis:  From the breakthrough international bestselling author of The Girl in the Ice, a breathtaking, page-turning novel about a disgraced female detective’s fight for redemption. And survival…
          Kate Marshall was a promising young police detective when she caught the notorious Nine Elms serial killer. But her greatest victory suddenly turned into a nightmare. Traumatized, betrayed, and publicly vilified for the shocking circumstances surrounding the cannibal murder case, Kate could only watch as her career ended in scandal.
          Fifteen years after those catastrophic events, Kate is still haunted by the unquiet ghosts of her troubled past. Now a lecturer at a small coastal English university, she finally has a chance to face them. A copycat killer has taken up the Nine Elms mantle, continuing the ghastly work of his idol.
          Enlisting her brilliant research assistant, Tristan Harper, Kate draws on her prodigious and long-neglected skills as an investigator to catch a new monster. Success promises redemption, but there’s much more on the line: Kate was the original killer’s intended fifth victim…and his successor means to finish the job.

4. Hawkes Harbor - S. E. Hinton

Audio read by Dick Hill
Brilliance Audio, 2004
6 unabridged cds
$29.95
6 hrs.
256 pages
Rating: 3.5

This was nothing like I expected from S. E. Hinton. It was a fascinating story with many different layers, investigating the human mind and psyche. Depression, amnesia, short term memory, affects of uppers and downers and muscle relaxers, and the holds that people can have on one another. Take one footloose orphan that’s become a conman, seaman, and rabble-rouser, add a life-changing encounter with a vampire, and away we go!

The story skips around from early 1960s to late 1970s and is told in different ways. Jamie Somers relates tales told by his Irish friend, Kell, that reveal his late teens and early twenties, we look at the world through Jamie’s eyes at different, later, time periods, and we also listen to the recordings and notes that Dr. McDevitt, director of Terrace View Asylum, shares during his time with Jamie. It’s a rolling sea of story. The ending is unsettling. But, as I think about it, as it sits with me awhile, it works.

The book was read quite well by Dick Hill. He put an inflection into Jamie’s voice, making him sound feeble-minded and totally messed up, uncertain or jaunty – when it was called for. His Irish brogue for Kell was great, and the deep, masterful voice of Grenville Hawkes was right-on.

What a story!