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It would be inaccurate to say that THE DEATH COLLECTORS by Jack Kerley fulfills the promise of the talent that was so vividly demonstrated in his debut novel, THE HUNDREDTH MAN. That riveting work, told in a strong, confident narrative and peopled with quietly unforgettable characters, demonstrated a well of talent that obviously ran deep and strong. THE DEATH COLLECTORS reaffirms that demonstration, not only by magnifying the strengths of its predecessor but by ultimately surpassing them, mixing a memorable protagonist with a host of quirky and occasionally unsettling supporting characters in a work where the present and the past collide with terrifying results.
THE DEATH COLLECTORS marks the welcome return of Carson Ryder and Harry Nautilus, the sum total of the Mobile, Alabama Police Department's Psychopathological and Sociopathological Investigative Team (PSIT). On the surface Ryder and Nautilus are a mismatch, yet their respective zigs and zags interlock them perfectly. Their PSIT work, alas, only involves one percent of their caseload. But when a woman is found brutally murdered at a by-the-hour hotel, the staged nature of the killing makes it a natural for their investigation.
The men soon discover that the murder, and others that follow, bear an eerie link to Marsden Hexcamp, a homicidal Pied Piper who led a sheeplike troop of followers on a homicidal rampage through the Gulf Coast over thirty years previously. Hexcamp has been dead for three decades, yet he almost seems to be directing the new murders from his grave. The trail leads Ryder and Nautilus to a missing attorney with an apparent link to the murders, as well as to a number of eerie individuals involved in the collecting of serial killing memorabilia.
Ryder and Nautilus reluctantly accept some assistance in their search from DeeDee Danbury, a local television reporter whose attraction to Ryder is not limited to professional matters. What Ryder, Nautilus and Danbury don't realize is that they are closer to the source of the murders than any of them can imagine --- and Ryder, particularly, is on the verge of being the final victim of a killer long deceased.
Kerley has a talent that is simply amazing; I can think of no other appropriate word for it. His work has the feel and sense of a bright, illuminating polish, one that will provide a reflection capable of scaring the heck out of you. Yet there is a folksiness about Ryder and Nautilus that makes them two of the more accessible characters operating in contemporary detective fiction. There is a laid-back quality to them, perhaps imbibed by their Gulf Coast backdrop, which makes them endearing while providing a subtle relief to the dark nature of the subject matter of their cases.
Kerley, and THE DEATH COLLECTORS, will give the reader grim but beautiful nightmares.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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