Every time I have gone to the store this summer the cover of John Lutz’s mystery novel Serial called to me from the shelf. It is one of those covers that catches your eye and makes you want to open the book. I am quite anal about starting a series at the beginning, but after giving Serial a good preview and reading the first few pages I decided to go ahead and buy it. I was excited at having a new series to delve into for the summer. By about page 30 I came to the realization that this has got to be one of the WORST books ever written! I am not exaggerating; this book was awful. I try to be objective when writing reviews and avoid trashing a book I disliked, but this goes beyond dislike. There were parts of the plot that I just found totally offensive. So I will clarify before you continue to read that this is not so much a review, as it is a rant about all the things I hated about this book. First let me describe the plot.
Serial begins with the protagonist, Frank Quinn, meeting the Commissioner of the NYPD at a gruesome crime scene. A woman has been tortured and killed in a very ritualistic fashion. The killer leaves several clues at the crime scene that suggests he is just getting started. That is where Quinn comes in. He is a world- renowned “serial killer hunter” who was once a NYPD detective and now runs his own private investigation agency with four other retired NYPD detectives. Also, the victim happens to be a young woman whose life Quinn had saved from a burning car fifteen years before. Therefore this killing is personal and Quinn wants to catch the guy who did it even more than other serial killers he has chased (except that plot angle is dropped as soon as he leaves the crime scene). As the plot progresses several more women are being murdered at the hands of “The Skinner” and Quinn and his team drink a lot of coffee at their desks and ponder what the killers motive may be. Every few chapters there is a flashback that takes the reader to Hogart, Missouri beginning twenty years before in 1991. This plotline describes the life of a woman named Beth whose parents were killed in a fiery car accident. In fact the first two victims of The Skinner also lost loved ones in horrible car accidents. It seemed that there was a pattern emerging. As the plot jumps between present day New York and 1991 Hogart we learn that Beth is married to an abusive man who is a little crazy about religion. One night when he sends her out to buy him some beer Beth is brutally raped in the woods. The sheriff, Wayne, who has a crush on Beth catches her rapist and he is sent to jail. Unfortunately the attack has left Beth pregnant with his child. Her nutty husband, Roy, can’t handle this and leaves her alone and destitute to raise her son Eddie. Fourteen years later, in 2005, Beth learns that the man who was sent to prison for raping her was wrongly convicted after DNA tests confirm he could not have been her attacker. Beth, dealing with horrible guilt, decides to start fresh and move an hour away from Hogart. This is when she meets Link Evans. A good ole’ country boy who loves Beth’s son Eddie just as much as he loves Beth, or maybe more. Three years into their marriage Beth can no longer deny the strong resemblance between her new husband and her son, but she decides to wait another two (or three, depending on what page you are on) years before finally sharing her suspicions with Sheriff Wayne and asking him to compare Eddie’s DNA to Link’s to see if it is a match. Since Link travels for work almost every weekend it also gives Beth and Wayne a chance to renew the affair they started after Roy left.
Now, while all of this is going on more women are being murdered in New York in 2011. At first the author wants the reader to believe that fiery car crashes are the common link between the Skinner victims and Beth. It is obvious that Beth is somehow the key to the whole mystery. It isn’t until about the 4th victim that we learn that the common factor is actually that all of the women have wrongly accused a man of raping them, sending the men to prison and ruining their lives. The fiery crashes and other commonalities of the crimes were just red herrings thrown out by the author to throw the reader and the detectives off the Skinner’s track. Unfortunately they did nothing to add to the suspense of the plot and were dropped like a hot rock once they were no longer useful. The amount of coincidences between the victims in this book becomes statistically impossible and only makes the plot more ridiculous and far-fetched.
During the Skinner’s rampage one of the falsely accused men actually is able to track him down and blackmail him. It really wasn’t that hard as he caught the Skinner stalking the woman he was accused of raping, who he himself was stalking as well. Once Quinn and his team find the connection between the women and get a list of the men they mistakenly accused you would think they would go out and find all of these people, maybe interview them. Nope. They just sit at their desks, drink some more coffee, and wait until someone is murdered until making their next move. The next move consists of going to the crime scene, looking around, and then going back to the office to sit and drink more coffee. Finally, a drunk and disgraced former NYPD cop named Jerry Lido, who rocks at computer stuff (because no one is real life could ever do what he does) finds a name among airplane tickets that matches the exact dates of the Skinner murders. And that name? Yep, you guessed it: Link Evans. Poor Beth has apparently picked two losers for husbands.
While Beth and Sheriff Wayne wait anxiously for the DNA results that will reveal if Link raped Beth all those years ago, Quinn and his trusty sidekick Pearl (I’ll get to her in a bit) fly to Missouri to capture their serial killer. They are totally unconcerned that every shred of evidence they have on him was obtained illegally and would never hold up in court. As luck would have it Link’s current trip is cut short and he arrives home just in time to see Sheriff Wayne getting it on with Beth. So, Link grabs a shotgun and is about to kill the poor Sheriff when Quinn and Pearl show up. Link could care less and shoots Wayne anyways while taking Beth hostage and driving off in the Sheriff’s SUV. Quinn, Pearl, and the State Patrol catch up with Link several miles later after he crashes the SUV, and just when you think Quinn is a goner Sheriff Wayne appears out of nowhere with a rifle and shoots Link dead. This is quite amazing since the last we saw of Wayne he was mortally wounded and Link had his SUV. Apparently the super-human Sheriff ran all of those miles and got the rifle out of the SUV just in time to save the day! Now that the Skinner is dead all of the answers about the Skinner case are gone too.
After the police leave, declaring the Skinner case closed, Sheriff Wayne brings Beth the results of the DNA test. He lies to her and says that Link’s DNA does not match the DNA of the man who raped her and therefore Link was not Eddie’s biological father, when in fact, Link was the rapist all the time. Meanwhile, back in New York Quinn feels uneasy with the resolution of the Skinner case. There was no direct evidence found to link Link to the murders. The police never found the unique carpet-tucking knife the Skinner used to carve up his victims. So Quinn decides to interview the man who was mistakenly accused of raping the last Skinner victim. The man, Scott Trent, drives a truck delivering . . .carpet! As Quinn begins to question him Pearl calls to tell him that Scott Trent is no other than Roy, Beth’s crazy first husband! After one of the dumbest chase scenes in the history of chase scenes Quinn finally apprehends Roy and the Skinner case is finally solved. And Beth can rest easy because her crazy 2nd husband wasn’t the Skinner after-all; it was her crazy 1st husband. Sheesh – see what I mean about impossible coincidences?
For those of you kind enough to keep reading I am now going list all of the problems in this book. Just writing this is making me feel better J
The Plot- Once the connection between the victims and Beth was established it seemed as if the author was trying to make a statement about how women ruin innocent men’s lives by accusing them of rape. The entire subject of rape was handled in an incredibly insensitive manner. I took particular offense to the vastly repeated phrase, “her rapist.” As if women somehow own the men who violate them and are responsible for their attacks.
The Victims- The author does a good job of portraying the women as strong and independent survivors, but once they meet the Skinner they become submissive and weak. Every single one of them! Except the last one (number six, I think) who finally fights back and survives. The extent to which he weakens these women is an insult to the female race. I could have bought his obviously sexist descriptions for one or two of the victims, but not five. It was almost as if the author took pleasure in degrading his own characters.
The Characters- I will admit that I liked Beth. Her story is what kept me going to the end. I wanted to know how she was connected to the events in New York. Other than that the rest of the characters were awful. First there is Quinn, the great serial killer hunter. Not once in this book does he do anything to earn that title. He literally sits at his desk and drinks coffee, unless he is out drinking with Jerry Lido. Jerry is the only one who actually did any detective work in this entire book. Quinn spends most of the time pining away for Pearl. Pearl, by the way, is the only cop not referred to by her last name, and when her name appeared it appeared about 20 times per paragraph. Every other word seemed to be Pearl. If Pearl wasn’t in the room the other characters were either talking about her, or thinking about her. I think the author was as obsessed with her as Quinn. The other problem with Pearl is that she had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. She was caustic and rude, and not in a witty fun way. Whenever she showed up Quinn had to baby-sit her to make sure she behaved. Her behavior completely impeded the investigation and Quinn was the only one who could stand her. He describes her as his “ideal woman,” but never once does the reader understand why in the world he would feel that way. I cannot stand when characters have illogical feelings for other characters. It makes no sense.
The DNA- Apparently the author doesn’t watch Law & Order and he must have missed that whole O.J. debacle (the first one). Why? Because it seems he has no idea that DNA fingerprinting has been used as evidence in court since the mid to late 90’s. These men in the book who were falsely convicted of rape were tried and convicted on witness I.D. and blood typing, although, based on the timeline the author creates the crimes all took place in the year 2000 and beyond. Why would the state of New York wait 5-6 years after a trial to finally compare DNA? It makes no sense (I’ve been saying that a lot) and given the timeline in the story the technology was available and being used widely in the real world, so it becomes very difficult as the reader to just dismiss it as well.
Sloppy Writing- I am one of those people that love to find errors in books. The errors usually amount to small typo’s that escaped the notice of an editor. The amount of plot errors made by the author in this book is completely unforgivable. It’s terrible that the author cannot keep his story straight, but the fact that his editor missed these too is amazing. There are some pretty big errors (although I found no typo’s). He often lost track of his characters citing the wrong name or having one person in two places at the same time while forgetting about the other characters in the scene. Then there came the two major errors. First was the Weaver error. Weaver was a female cop who was beaten by the Skinner as she tracked him. A few days after her beating Quinn tells his staff that she is out of the hospital, on medical leave, not thinking clearly, but expected to make a full recovery, and staying with her sister. Literally two pages later another detective is assigned to guard the outside of Weaver’s hospital room in case the Skinner comes back to finish her off. Her condition is very grave, as she has been slipping in and out of a coma since the attack. When she does get out of the hospital (again) several chapters later it is obvious she will never be the same again and her career as a cop is over. On the plus side she does go to stay with her sister. I was so stunned that an accomplished author would make such an obvious mistake that I went back and reread the Weaver scenes and again I had not missed anything. The author had messed up. The next major plot error occurred in Missouri. When Sheriff Wayne gets a new computer he can’t use diner owner Norm Vanderbilt (no relation to the Vanderbilt’s – that what the author wrote) suggests that his wife Edna’s nephew Matthew, who is staying with them, takes a look, as he is a whiz at computers. When we finally meet Edna she is a lonely widow as her husband, and Wayne’s hunting buddy, Joe died several years before. We hear a lot about poor dead Joe, as Norm has been conveniently forgotten. That’s too bad since he probably could have helped Edna with her porn loving nephew and not bothered Sheriff Wayne about it. The other plot problem is that there are way too many scenes that go absolutely nowhere and have nothing to do with the murders. They are not suspenseful. They are just plain boring. Finally, the timeline in this book is vital to the interconnecting stories, but it gets lost several times and rushed as the author tries to match the stories together. One day in Missouri it’s 2010 and two weeks later it’s the present, which per the New York timeline is 2011, and this time travel occurs in the middle of summer, so it’s no where near New Years.
Too many coincidences- To make this story believable you have to believe that Beth wrongly identifies a man she thought had raped her in 1991, as do several young and beautiful women living within proximity to each other in New York between 2000-2005. Although the Skinner only gets six the actual total is 29. When Beth’s husband leaves her she unknowingly marries the man who actually did rape her after learning the man she identified was innocent. At the same time her first husband Roy finds himself in the exact same predicament of being wrongly identified as a rapist and serving time in prison. Husband #2 goes off the deep end and tries to kill Beth after learning she was having an affair with Sheriff Wayne, although he was having one with a woman in New York. Husband #1 goes off the deep end after his release from prison and kills women who accidentally identified the wrong men as their attackers. Yet, he finds the time to frame Husband #2 for his crimes. And it would have worked if it weren’t for those meddling detectives! And let’s not forget that just about everyone in this book has been the victim of a fiery car crash that claimed the lives of their loved ones. I’m starting to think that I got the genre wrong. Maybe this book was supposed to be fantasy.
To those who stuck with it and read my rant – thank you. I hope my opinions are not offensive, as John Lutz must have a large following considering the amount of books he has written. I am willing to agree that maybe I just picked the wrong book to start with. If anyone would like to recommend another of his titles I would be happy to give it a try. I would like to read SWF Seeks Same as I enjoyed the movie. And maybe I am being too critical, but it’s my blog, so I get to voice my opinions. You don’t have to agree and you don’t have to read my review. But I started on a new mystery last night and I can’t put it down, so hopefully my next review will be a bit more positive. J
