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The Beauty Of Murder by A. K. Benedict
Apr. 17th, 2016 02:39 amThe Blurb On The Back:
Stephen Killigan has been cold since the day he arrived in Cambridge. Seven hundred years of history staining the stones of the university have given him a chill he can’t shake. Then he stumbles across the body of a missing beauty queen – a body that disappears before the police arrive …
Killigan enters the sinister world of Jackamore Grass on a trail that reaches back to seventeenth-century Cambridge. It’s a world of cadavers, tattooists, philosophers and scholars of deadly beauty, a world where a corpse can be found before someone goes missing and of a city and a killer that hold many secrets written in blood.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
A. K. Benedict’s debut crime novel mixes time travel, murder and the philosophy of beauty to mixed effect. I picked this up because I loved the idea of a time-travelling killer and for the most part Jackamore Grass is a suitably creepy antagonist whose unusual abilities have made him arrogant and disconnected to such an extent that it’s only the discovery that Killigan shares his time-travelling gift that brings some excitement back to his life. Unfortunately I found Killigan a less interesting protagonist – a drifter for most of his life he flits from supporting character to supporting character and never really develops a relationship with anyone, whether it’s his supposed best friend Satnam or his love interest, Lana (who are brought in and out as the plot dictates it). I was particularly frustrated by his failure to push anyone for information – especially in his scenes with Robert Sachs, which don’t really go anywhere and served to irritate me as much as Killigan. I actually found myself wanting more of Hart, whose battle with breast cancer made her easy to empathise with and whose struggle to come to terms with what Killigan tells her is well depicted. The biggest let down of the novel though is the lack of resolution and while that is in keeping with the philosophical themes in the book, it made for a disappointing end. Ultimately, although this book didn’t quite work for me, there’s enough here for me to read more of Benedict’s work.
Stephen Killigan has been cold since the day he arrived in Cambridge. Seven hundred years of history staining the stones of the university have given him a chill he can’t shake. Then he stumbles across the body of a missing beauty queen – a body that disappears before the police arrive …
Killigan enters the sinister world of Jackamore Grass on a trail that reaches back to seventeenth-century Cambridge. It’s a world of cadavers, tattooists, philosophers and scholars of deadly beauty, a world where a corpse can be found before someone goes missing and of a city and a killer that hold many secrets written in blood.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): ) The Verdict:
A. K. Benedict’s debut crime novel mixes time travel, murder and the philosophy of beauty to mixed effect. I picked this up because I loved the idea of a time-travelling killer and for the most part Jackamore Grass is a suitably creepy antagonist whose unusual abilities have made him arrogant and disconnected to such an extent that it’s only the discovery that Killigan shares his time-travelling gift that brings some excitement back to his life. Unfortunately I found Killigan a less interesting protagonist – a drifter for most of his life he flits from supporting character to supporting character and never really develops a relationship with anyone, whether it’s his supposed best friend Satnam or his love interest, Lana (who are brought in and out as the plot dictates it). I was particularly frustrated by his failure to push anyone for information – especially in his scenes with Robert Sachs, which don’t really go anywhere and served to irritate me as much as Killigan. I actually found myself wanting more of Hart, whose battle with breast cancer made her easy to empathise with and whose struggle to come to terms with what Killigan tells her is well depicted. The biggest let down of the novel though is the lack of resolution and while that is in keeping with the philosophical themes in the book, it made for a disappointing end. Ultimately, although this book didn’t quite work for me, there’s enough here for me to read more of Benedict’s work.
