Adam Colclough lives and works in the West Midlands, he writes regularly for a number of websites, one day he will get round to writing a book for someone else to review.
London in the cold winter of 1989, the naked body of a man is found on an empty plinth in one of the city parks. The first victim of a killer who likes to recreate masterpieces off Western art using corpses. DS Ben Chambers is tasked with tracking him down, a case that comes close to costing him his life before the chief suspect slips the net and due to lack of evidence.
1996, nearly ten years on and the killer is back making his unique ‘art’ out of death, this time round a newly fledged detective with a personal interest in the case is on his tail. Against his better judgement she persuades Chambers to resume the hunt, beginning an unofficial investigation that could cost them their lives.
Daniel Cole, author of the chilling trilogy of novels beginning with Ragdoll is back with another slice of darkness. His knack of finding inventive way to put his readers on edge is as strong as ever.
Cole assembles a genuinely creepy plot that draws on the alienation of big city life and the long shadow cast by traumatic experiences to give his characters and setting added depth. He also makes a neat swipe at the pretentions of the artistic world, particularly the obsession of practitioners of modern art with death and decay.
The constant churn of serial killer novels can sometimes make you feel they are a sub-genre written largely by rote. Every so often though a writer comes along to remind you that they can force us to look at dark things we’d rather ignore. Daniel Cole is just such a writer; long may he go on making our flesh crawl.
