Killing The Beasts

Copyright: 2005
Rating: 8/10

Leaning forward on the sofa, she gratefully accepted the stick of gum, unwrapped it and then folded it into her mouth. 'Thanks,' she said breathlessly, looking expectantly at her visitor and eagerly chewing.

The lady mentioned in the above paragraph, the first paragraph of the prologue of Killing The Beasts, is about to die. So are other women. If you like your victims dead, female, weird, but not ravaged, then you will like Chris Simms' novel.

Set in an island off the European coast, in a town named Manchester, around the time of the 2002 Commonwealth Games, when Australia won 82 gold medals (206 medals in total) and New Zealand scored a paltry 11, Detective Inspector Jon Spicer has to catch the killer, stop car thieves who use knives, save his best friend, make his wife pregnant, and avoid making the attractive officer Nikki Kingston pregnant.

If this book is made into a movie by Hollywood, Nikki will be played by Angelina Jolie and there will be a gratuitous nude scene. Chris Simms leaves out that type of distraction and sticks to suspense. If anything is wrong with this book, it is a little too polite. My wife will like the book whereas I could have enjoyed a little more gore under the excuse of it being realism.

The book starts with several intertwining stories that seem like one to many to be relevant. Part way through, the separate stories start to click together as possible leads, and the whole lot wrap up with everything neatly in place. In wine terms, this is a crisp dry finish.

I like the way Chris finishes the story so fast, no drag out story of a funeral or wedding or any of the other stuff that writers use to pad out a book. This is all good stuff and the case snaps shut when ..., I will let you read that part for yourself.

Conclusion

Buy [amazon 0752877992 inline] then Chris Simms' next novel titled Shifting Skin.