The Book Gourmet

A serial killer has started terrorizing the women of the Twin Cities. He stalks them in the virtual world, sets up dates in the real world, follows them home and submits them to their worst fears before killing them. Every murder is staged as a suicide with the woman hanging from a hook in her bedroom, dressed and made-up as a prostitute, her eyes glued open, an overturned stool under her, a pair of red pumps on the carpet.

Detective Noah Webster suspects foul play when a “suicide” looks just like one he’s seen a few weeks back, but the bodies keep on piling. So what is the connection? It all seems to come down to a single woman. Eve Wilson is writing a thesis on therapeutic effects of online gaming onto a subject’s real-life life. Every murdered woman was one of Eve’s test subjects. Still, what is the connection? Does the killer not want for Eve to succeed or is his motive much more sinister?


Hmmm, after a very good book streak, this one came as a slight disappointment for me. The villain was nicely twisted, the pacing good and the suspense wonderful, it was everything else that somehow didn’t work for me.

I disliked Eve from the moment she appeared in the first book, wanted to beat her up in the fourth book, and though she’s come a long way from that whiny, selfish, hateful girl, she still annoyed me. I just couldn’t connect with her, though I couldn’t say the same with her counterpart, Noah.
I actually did miss the romance in this book, what we got were mere glimpses and they were rather cold and generic.

Everything else, apart the villain and “his side” of the suspense arc, seemed put in there in preparation for the next story, and though I love David Hunter and can’t wait to read his book (the “tell her I said hi”-“tell him I said hello” tidbit was so high-school it made me laugh), this aspect of the plot was a little off-putting. I know each and every book in this quasi-series sets the background and characters for the next book, but it was never as obvious as in this case.

It was still a good book, but not as good as I’ve come to expect from Ms. Rose of late.