Wednesday, January 07, 2015

The Last Dead Girl -- Harry Dolan

I haven't read Harry Dolan's previous novels about David Malone, but it turns out that's okay because this one is a prequel.  The year is 1998, and Malone is working as a guy who inspects houses for prospective buyers, not that he has time to do much inspecting in the course of the story.

Malone meets a young woman who's been in a car accident, and they're immediately romantically involved.  Then she's murdered.  Malone is a suspect, but the cop in charge of the investigation doesn't really press him.  Malone begins to look into things on his own, as often happens in this kind of story.  He finds out a lot, too.

The book jumps around in time and perspective.  Malone narrates his sections in first person, but we get sections from the PoV of a killer as well as flashbacks from the PoV of the murdered woman.  Malone has a bit of backstory that's filled in, too.  There are plenty of surprises as the plot unfolds, and the writing is clean and assured. Check it out the next time you're in the mood for a serial killer tale.

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