Returning to Reviews with STAY OF EXECUTION

It's been awhile, dear readers, but today I'm returning to the reviewer's saddle and mounting up for a good ride through mystery, intrigue, and murder.  What better way to do that than visit a new release from an author previously highlighted here.

With her sophomore release of the Detective Cancini Mystery series, I'm pleased to have the opportunity to bring author Kellie Larsen Murphy to you once again.  My review of A GUILTY MIND, her debut novel in this series, can be found HERE.  Ms. Murphy is no stranger to gut-wrenching situations and hard-boiled police procedure and brings that to us once again in STAY OF EXECUTION.

Book Blurb:
Little Springs was just a small college town, the kind of town where everyone knew everyone and violent crime was nonexistent—until a series of rapes and murders at the college. After an outbreak of fear and hysteria, only the arrest and conviction of Leo Spradlin, the "Co-Ed Killer," could end the terror.

Years later, Spradlin is suddenly cleared based on unshakable DNA evidence, and no one is more surprised than Detective Mike Cancini. As new questions surround the identity of the true "Co-Ed Killer," Cancini struggles to accept his role in the conviction of an innocent man. Suspicions mount when Spradlin’s release coincides with a fresh wave of rapes and murders at the college, eerily reminiscent of the original crimes. Cancini is drawn back to Little Springs, caught in a race against time to uncover the identity of the latest "Co-Ed Killer" before the next girl dies…

A tension-filled psychological mystery, STAY OF EXECUTION is also a novel about loyalty, deceit, and the darker side of truth.

My Review:
The novel opens in a world of chaos as an imprisoned killer is released when the DNA evidence in the case initially used to convict him is retested and unmistakably exonerates him.  The media feeding frenzy begins.  The political points are pursued.

And a small town is once again shaken to its core.

Not to mention the detective who almost single-handedly placed this supposed killer behind bars, launching him into the nation's eye.  Now Mike Cancini calls into question every case, every lead, and returns to the small town to retrace his steps and pick up the cold trail of a murderer - even though his boss has forbidden him to do so.

So what does Mike do?  Takes vacation and returns to the hamlet of Little Springs, Virginia, revisiting old haunts, old acquaintances, and the ghosts of a gruesome past he'd thought long buried.

Until the murders start all over again.

Once again, we have a novel well plotted and paced, with characters you at times want to love AND strangle.  Detective Cancini is still a bit of an enigma with challenges, self-doubt, and personal family issues that help connect this reader to him.  However, I had trouble connecting with Julia Manning, the intrepid reporter inserting herself into this story.  She didn't feel fully fleshed out and did some things that just made me roll my eyes.  She seemed inconsistent, though will perhaps return as a love interest for Cancini in the following novel.  There also was an overabundance of pronoun usage and quite a few more editing errors that jumped out and bit me - mainly a lot of missing small words and punctuation.

But the tension at times was thick.  You could feel Cancini's absolute frustration.  The fear of the townspeople was palpable.  The sneers and snide sense of "justice" on the part of certain media personalities and politicians was almost visible and made me want to slap someone - emotion is always good in a novel.  The details in the police procedure (like the minutiae in the DNA testing) was very interesting.

After being so pleasantly surprised by the twist at the end of A GUILTY MIND, I'd hoped to get something similar in STAY OF EXECUTION.  However, before I even hit the 20% reading mark on my Kindle, I had every detail figured out, which left me a little deflated by the end.  I'd hoped I was wrong.  I'd prayed I was wrong.  But everything was exactly as expected when I turned the final electronic page.

Then again, I'm just a little weird that way.

Will most readers have it all figured out by the end?  Maybe not.  Is this a well-crafted story?  Yes.  Can you get a good sense of the fear permeating the atmosphere?  Absolutely!  And for that I'll give STAY OF EXECUTION four stars.

Content Warning:  There is occasional use of strong language in STAY OF EXECUTION.  Some subject matter may be offensive or disturbing to some readers, including the rape and murder of a couple of victims (though these are not drawn out to the extreme).

Pick up a copy at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Author Bio:
Kellie Larsen Murphy is the author of A GUILTY MIND and STAY OF EXECUTION, the first two books
in the Detective Cancini Mystery series. She has written for several mid-Atlantic magazines and resides in Richmond, Virginia, with her husband, four children, and two very large, very hairy dogs. She would be happy to hear from readers through her website, www.kellielarsenmurphy.com.

You can also visit her on Twitter @aguiltymind.

Grope the Mind of a Serial Killer in "The Sketcher's Mark"

It's a review at your doorstep today.  This novel is gripping and horrifying enough to make you want to never never leave your home shores - maybe even your home.  Let's explore Chris O'Neill's debut novel The Sketcher's Mark.

Book Blurb:

A serial killer posing as a sketch artist preys on young women traveling alone in the tourist areas of Paris.  His latest victim is the sister of driven LAPD Detective Lara McBride, a woman who hunts predators like him for a living. When she touches down in Paris to find her missing sister, an escalating game of cat and mouse leads her and the killer from the rain swept streets of Paris to the isolated countryside, where the key to the killer's Masterpiece awaits them...

My Review:
The Sketcher's Mark possesses the pace of a thriller with the psychology and gore of an extremely creepy horror novel.  At times there were familiar themes like in the movie Taken.  But the psychology aspect of the antagonist, Guillotine, wraps you in the mind of an incredibly talented, intelligent, and disturbed serial killer.  At times it was very difficult reading - especially when I knew the worst was yet to come.

Like many unknown artists in Paris, Guillotine sketches the images of visiting tourists and signs them with his mark of HH.  Unlike most other unknown artists in Paris, Guillotine doesn't do it for the money.  He's searching for perfection - angels to add to his collection as he prepares for his debut showing in a Parisian art gallery.

And to use to complete his masterpiece in time for the debut.

But his deceased aunts follow him at every turn, demanding blood as retribution for what he did years before.  It takes pain to purify - something Guillotine knows only too well.

Lara McBride, one of LA's finest criminal profilers, waits impatiently on the other side of the pond for her sister, Janelle, to return from a French backpacking expedition.  When Janelle doesn't show and Lara cannot reach her via phone, she fears the worst.

After all, she's seen the most twisted criminal minds.

With little assistance from Parisian authorities, Lara searches the local haunts and pieces the puzzle together as she searches to locate her sister before it's too late.  All the while, Guillotine watches Lara in fascination until it's obvious she's getting too close and could ruin everything.  Lara then becomes his mark.

Like I said, pacing was good for the most part and kept me reading - at times even when I didn't want to.  The disturbing trips into Guillotine's world reflected well the trauma of abuse he suffered at the hands of his two aunts who raised him, along with the willing assistance of the local parish priest in their attempts to purify him as a child.  It is no wonder he is now capable of the horrible ways in which he sees and treats others and the methodology he utilizes to kill.  For a bad guy, Guillotine is the worst - and yet even among daily life he's still rather invisible among the masses, which is the way he likes it.

I understood certain aspects of Lara McBride, the drive to do whatever she had to do in order to try and save her sister.  However, this character was rather inconsistent as the novel progressed.  There were choices she made that were simply unbelievable for one as well-trained as she.  Then the multiple ways in which Lara cheats death got to be a little too much for this reader.  But I still needed to see how the story would play out into the finale.

In addition to good pacing, the showing over telling was nice.  I got to follow along and experience the story in real time, as it was happening, which helped move the plot forward and kept me reading.  Even though point-of-view sneaked in between characters, it was accomplished in such a way that it avoided being overly jarring.  A scene break in most instances would solve this problem.

Another round of editing would be good for The Sketcher's Mark.  Pronoun usage was over-the-top excessive with almost every sentence in each paragraph for page after page beginning with 'He' or 'She' but could easily be reworded to remove many.  Several times a correctly spelled but incorrect word would be used, such as cat instead of car, taught instead of taut, and peak instead of peek.  There was also a continual refrain of phrases like 'her watched her' and 'her was intrigued by her' when it should've been 'he watched her' and the like.  I could forgive it a few times, but this occurred over and over again.

Even with the aforementioned issues, the story kept me engaged.  The pacing and showing forced me forward, not to mention the eery mind of Guillotine.  However, be warned that the story is gruesome and terrifying at times in the manner he kills, so tread lightly if gore is a problem for you.  Story always trumps structure for me - and for that I'll give The Sketcher's Mark four stars.

Pick up a copy by clicking on Amazon.

Author Bio:

Born in England, raised in the UK, the Middle East and the Bahamas, Chris O'Neill began writing short stories at a young age in primary school. By high school, he was writing and staging plays, commissioned to write an original stage play for the World War One Commemoration Festival in Leeds, premiering a play focussing on war poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.

He was accepted into the National Youth Theatre at sixteen, beating out competition from thousands of other young actors across the United Kingdom. While there, he was asked to write and co-direct the final showcase in London. Attending the University Of East Anglia, he studied Film and was the head of the Drama Society, continuing to showcase new plays before continuing his Film and Theatre Studies at San Francisco State University.

After graduating university, he focussed on writing screenplays and creating short films, working with various British production companies on developing feature scripts. In 2006 he moved to Los Angeles, where he enjoyed working with A-list producers, directors and production companies on developing projects.

THE SKETCHER'S MARK is his first prose novel, a labour of love which he feels is best described as Thomas Harris meets Charles Dickens. It marks the first novel featuring Detective Lara McBride.