A crime novel in which the exploits of a murderer are viewed from three perspectives: that of his wife, who still loves him; that of a journalist, who made her career because of him; and that of a police detective, who is still obsessed with him.
Gloria Seever never intended to share her life with a man who would murder 31 people and bury their remains in the crawl space under the house. She just wasn’t very observant ... In trying to understand Seever’s appeal to his imitator, Ralph Loren of the Denver Police Department adopts his fashion sense, hairstyle and mannerisms, which alters his looks but doesn’t do much for his deductive skills. But while that plot turn leads down a blind alley, Chaney has more success with her other, striking characters.
...[an] unusually thoughtful first novel, which relies more on character studies than gory details ... The pace is unusually slow for a thriller with no grisly murder scenes, but that’s part of the book’s strength. It’s the escalating psychological tension and the interactions of three-dimensional characters that lift this well above the serial-killer norm.
...[an] unsettling, well-crafted first novel ... All the point-of-view characters—Hoskins, Sammie, Gloria—are tragically flawed in believable ways, though the flat, untidy ending may leave some readers feeling frustrated.
