I love Bentley Little but

I love Bentley Little but this one is full of missed opportunity and some pretty important dropped threads.

It is an early effort from the author who has since become the master of finding horror in mundanity. Here he starts with a very interesting serial killer premise.

The murderer uses regular household items and an obsessive precision to create cinematic crime scenes.

These deaths take time and patience and are unbelievably cruel in nature. It’s the kind of extra crazy we like to see on a prestige cable or streaming drama.

BUT THEN – Little just drops that amazing MO altogether. The killer becomes undisciplined, dumb and sloppy. The murders, while suitably gross, lack any of the creativity shown earlier in the story. It goes from brilliant to boring about midway through the investigation. Even the “twist” in the killer’s identity is kind of boring by the time we get there. Such a missed opportunity.

Overall, it’s a fine tale and mostly well told. Little’s signature sexual weirdness is present and as always he can write kids really well. The Narrator had to be sped up to be tolerable but wasn’t too offputtingly bad.