Nothing like a serial killer story with mutilated bodies and cops on the chase to be another form of “palate cleanser” after reading some heavier books about grief and trauma. I don’t know why those are easier to devour, as it were, but they’re just good fun. It’s like binging Criminal Minds versus something like Mare of Easttown (an incredible TV series, by the way). Anyhow, that’s not a reflection on the writing quality or to diminish the former in any way: I devour them for a reason! In this case, I devoured over the course of two days Tania Carver’s second novel, The Creeper, featuring the duo of Detective Inspector Phil Brennan and Marina Esposito, a forensic psychologist.
A stalker/sexual sadist/serial killer is seemingly on the lose in England, and a separate case of stalking suddenly becomes linked when the woman in the case, Suzanne’s, best friend is killed. What I loved about the Suzanne character is from the male perspectives — the teacher she had an affair with who then stalked her, and an ex-boyfriend who still pined for her — Suzanne was a paranoid false accuser against them and their character. As it turned out, Suzanne was right about both of them, and the ex-boyfriend turned out to be part of the triad of mayhem in the book.
Due to police incompetence at the top, a psychologist was brought on — Marina was out on maternity leave and dealing with her own issues of “pulling the plug” on her ex-partner, who was attacked in Carver’s debut novel presumably, otherwise she would’ve been tapped — without being properly vetted. Fiona Welch, who seemed over her skis in “building a profile” of the killer, turned out to the be the principle manipulator of the triad. She was manipulating the ex-boyfriend to go along with it all, and target his ex-girlfriends, including Suzanne. In addition, she was using a former soldier discharged from the army after being badly burned (and raping and killing his Afghan interpreter) to do the actual killings her. He was her quasi-Frankenstein, owing to his monster-like visage from the burns. Like any manipulator at this level, she ingratiated herself into the case to a.) prove she could and b.) steer the police wrong.
But Phil and his team, Rose Martin aside (she was sleeping with the incompetent boss and detrimentally ambitious, nearly costing the boss and her their lives), managed to put the pieces together about the ex-boyfriend, the burned soldier, that something was off about Fiona, and what tied them all together. They even managed to rescue Rose, save the boss’s life, and rescue Suzanne, who in turn was the one to kill both the soldier and Fiona to save Phil. Suzanne was not only vindicated against the teacher and the ex-boyfriend, but she found her strength in the end to stand up for herself and fight off her “monsters,” as it were.
I have a few minor criticisms of the plotting and characterization — a copper being terrified of a threat instead of ready to face it, even accounting for regular cops not carrying guns in England, and not testing the readily available semen of the soldier from Suzanne’s kitchen immediately, which would have led them more quickly to him, given his DNA surely was in the system, as two of the examples that come to mind — but my biggest criticism, is that I wish we got more of Marina! She’s peppered throughout the book dealing with the issue of her ex-partner and running away from Phil with their daughter, and then only toward the end comes in and helps guide the police through the interrogation and procuring the confession of Suzanne’s ex-boyfriend, but I wish we had gotten more of her in that psychological mode. She was great! Granted, that wouldn’t have been possible because the whole point was to have Fiona fill the void, detrimentally so, to be fair.
Anyhow, I literally read about 430 of the 468 pages of Carver’s book across two or three long, single-sitting reads because of how captivating it was to figure out how all the pieces came together and how the cops would stop the killers. I also wanted to know what was going on with Marina. If you also find serial killer-type books a fun time, then you’ll enjoy Carver’s book and the copper-psychologist duo here.
Milam's Musings 