Nov 13, 2002 10:09 AM
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(Updated Nov 13, 2002 10:09 AM)
A mummy nicknamed Sleeping Beauty has been brutally stolen by Stopwatch. The mummy is then shipped to Canada where it is collected by the Undertaker and transported to an unknown location for use by the Director. At the same time a large number of bodies begin appearing in Canada and the US, all of women who have been murdered using a plastic surgery taken to extreme limits.
Enter into the story Special X, a division within the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, whose speciality is investigating cross border crimes. Their search unearths an entire subculture of criminals operating on the World Wide Web each using the other to fulfil their own warped fantasies. Little do they know that it is the Director who is pulling all the strings and it is he who has the master plan as well as some old scores to settle with the Mounties. Will he succeed or will the Mounties get their man well you will have to read it and see. Michael Slade is the pseudonym for a Canadian criminal Lawyer and his daughter. This is the ninth Special X thriller and it still maintains the high standards set by the writers in their earlier books. Slade is one of the best examples of police procedural novels available and this combined with plots that only a psychopath could put together you have one of the best cross over between horror and crime around.
Although the criminals keep changing the police and pathologists involved stay largely the same. All the characters that appear within the books are very realistic and not one sided. Almost all of them have now suffered loss or hardship as a result of the criminals that they have faced and this has brought interesting aspects to their personalities. Slade’s books are good because you do not have to read the first eight to read the ninth you can pick them up and read them and still enjoy the book. Picking them up, however, after reading the others is like meeting old friends. Beware Slade’s books are gory. They put most horror writers to shame. They are very descriptive but are yet very faced paced and generally once you pick them up it is hard to put them down and this one is no different. Like all the others Slade gives you a lot of detailed knowledge of the concepts involved in a way that is similar to Michael Creighton. T
his book is also unusual in that it mixes factual characters with fictional ones but you will have to read it to see who they are. The only drawback is that being a Canadian author the book is not that easy to get hold of. However, if you like your crime gory then Slade is for you and this book is worth making the effort for.
