Read on my iPhone/through Kindle/Audio eBooks
Audio read by Jonathan Davis
9 unabridged cds (11:00)
2009 Minotaur/McMillan
336 pgs.
Adult Murder Mystery
Finished 10/21/2014
Goodreads rating: 3.80
My rating: (4) Loved it, despite a few "flaws"
Setting: Contemporary Portland, ME
1st sentence/s: from prologue: "July, 1971. He pressed the terrified creature firmly against his body. He was a sturdy boy, tall for his eight years, with dark hair and a long, thin face. After more than a month of summer sunshine, his normally fair skin had turned quite brown."
from Chapter 1: "Portland, Maine; September 16, 2005. Fog can be a sudden thing on the Maine coast. Even on the clearest mornings, swirling grey mists sometimes appeared in an instant, covering the earth with an opacity that makes it hard to see even one's own feet on the ground."
from Chapter 1: "Portland, Maine; September 16, 2005. Fog can be a sudden thing on the Maine coast. Even on the clearest mornings, swirling grey mists sometimes appeared in an instant, covering the earth with an opacity that makes it hard to see even one's own feet on the ground."
My comments: I love intense murder mysteries (does that make me ghoulish?) but this one had a few "grizzly" factors that almost took it too far for me. This always happens when it involves any cutting of the skin with a knife or scalpel. I have a difficult time with this. The title should certainly tip one off...... That said, I greatly enjoyed this mystery. I love the setting - Portland, Maine and upwards to Blue Hill (home!), and I really like the very human protagonist, Mike McCabe. He's a police detective who has relocated from NYC with his 13-year-old daughter, Casey. He made a few assumptions -- perhaps you could call them gut feelings - that seemed a bit over the top, but without which he could not have followed the clues to catching the bad guy. And this one one bad-ass bad guy.....
Goodreads book summary:
Detective Sergeant Michael McCabe moved from New York City to Portland, Maine, to escape a dark past: both the ex-wife who’d left him for an investment banker, and the tragic death of his brother, a hero cop gone bad. He sought to raise his young daughter away from the violence of the big city . . . so he’s unprepared for the horrific killer he discovers, whose bloody trail may lead to Portland’s social elite.
Early on a September evening, the mutilated body of a pretty teenaged girl, a high school soccer star, is found dumped in a scrap-metal yard. She had been viciously assaulted, but her heart had been cut out of her chest with surgical precision. The very same day a young businesswoman, also a blonde and an athlete, was abducted as she jogged through the streets of the city’s west end. McCabe suspects both crimes are the work of the same man---a killer who’s targeting the young---who is clearly well-versed in complex surgical procedures, and who may have struck before. Just as the investigation is beginning, McCabe’s ex-wife reemerges, suddenly determined to reclaim the daughter she heedlessly abandoned years earlier.
With the help of his straight-talking (and, at times, alluring) partner, Maggie Savage, McCabe begins a race against time to rescue the missing woman and unmask a sadistic killer---before more lives are lost.
Detective Sergeant Michael McCabe moved from New York City to Portland, Maine, to escape a dark past: both the ex-wife who’d left him for an investment banker, and the tragic death of his brother, a hero cop gone bad. He sought to raise his young daughter away from the violence of the big city . . . so he’s unprepared for the horrific killer he discovers, whose bloody trail may lead to Portland’s social elite.
Early on a September evening, the mutilated body of a pretty teenaged girl, a high school soccer star, is found dumped in a scrap-metal yard. She had been viciously assaulted, but her heart had been cut out of her chest with surgical precision. The very same day a young businesswoman, also a blonde and an athlete, was abducted as she jogged through the streets of the city’s west end. McCabe suspects both crimes are the work of the same man---a killer who’s targeting the young---who is clearly well-versed in complex surgical procedures, and who may have struck before. Just as the investigation is beginning, McCabe’s ex-wife reemerges, suddenly determined to reclaim the daughter she heedlessly abandoned years earlier.
With the help of his straight-talking (and, at times, alluring) partner, Maggie Savage, McCabe begins a race against time to rescue the missing woman and unmask a sadistic killer---before more lives are lost.
