The Whisperer by Donato Carrisi

Title: The Whisperer

Author: Donato Carrisi

Series: Stand Alone

Pages: 432

Published: January 5th 2012 by Mulholland Books

ISBN: 9780316194723

Source: Publisher via Netgalley

 Description:  Six severed arms are discovered, arranged in a mysterious circle and buried in a clearing in the woods. Five of them appear to belong to missing girls between the ages of eight and eighteen. The sixth is yet to be identified. Worse still, the girls' bodies, alive or dead, are nowhere to be found.  Lead investigators Mila Vasquez, a celebrated profiler, and Goran Gavila, an eerily prescient criminologist, dive into the case. They're confident they've got the right suspect in their sights until they discover no link between him and any of the kidnappings except the first. The evidence in the case of the second missing child points in a vastly different direction, creating more questions than it answers.  Vasquez and Gavila begin to wonder if they've been brought in to take the fall in a near-hopeless case. Is it all coincidence? Or is a copycat criminal at work? Obsessed with a case that becomes more tangled and intense as they unravel the layers of evil, Gavila and Vasquez find that their lives are increasingly in each other's hands.

I Give This ...

 

I've had this on my review pile for a long time but for some reason never got a round to reading it.  It's a book that would have fallen into the category of the books I always read before I started blogging.  I haven't found as much enjoyment with this type as of late.

What first caught my attention was the pure genius/insanity of our killer in this story.  The details are so intricately woven together that I often wondered if we would every truly piece it all together.  We get each part of the story a little bit at a time.  It was interesting to see how our killer interacted with each of these people he brings to the investigators attention.  I loved how he pointed out the there so many individuals who are leading normal lives hiding dark and terrible secrets.

I think part of the problem is that its entirely too long.  I think parts of the story could have been edited and it wouldn't have lost and of its shock value.  It also spends far to much time telling you things.  I've read my fair share of thrillers, and most of the things this book repeatedly tells you are things one is already familiar with.   I get that the author is trying to help us understand the mind of the killer, but I just found it annoying. 

I think die hard fans of thrillers will really like this one.  I think it just goes to prove that I'm on the outs with this genre