SKIN DEEP
Gary Braver
Forge Books
Psychological Thriller
ISBN: 9780765309754
Gary Goshgarian (aka Gary Braver) sent me an advance reading copy of SKIN DEEP during the summer, long before it was published. It is no secret that I am a fan of Gary Braver's work. Home alone for a weekend, I plunged into the book the first day it was in my possession. And I just as quickly put it down. A few chapters in and I was terrified. Braver's novels had scared me in the past. But this one was different.
Underlying all of Braver's thrillers is both a premise and a question. The premise: we are impacted on a daily basis by unavoidable, ever-present social pressures. The question: to what degree do we allow ourselves to be impacted?
ELIXIR asks how far we are willing to go to stop the effects of aging and at what costs. GRAY MATTER ponders what tactics parents will take to mold their children into the next Einstein. And FLASHBACK looks at the devastating results of rushing a drug to market that may or may not combat the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. SKIN DEEP asks how far we are willing to go to change the image we see in the mirror. But it also asks what torments are imbedded so deeply that they can never be excised, no matter what extreme measures we take to rid ourselves of them.
Detective Steve Markarian is trying to track down a clever killer who is murdering beautiful women in Braver's favorite backyard, Boston. Using flashbacks to a disturbing childhood, Braver pulls us along through a life tormented by forbidden desire and obsession. But whose life are we following? Markarian, likable in his frailties, is troubled by the separation from his long-time wife and struggling with addiction. His vulnerability leads not only the reader to suspect his own guilt in the murders but Markarian himself. As he watches his soon-to-be ex-wife investigate plastic surgery and delves deeper into the deaths of women who resemble her, Markarian uncovers that there are some evils that mark the heart and soul forever.
What Braver knows inside and out is what scares us --- and what fascinates us. And in SKIN DEEP he stitches the two together better than ever before. It is by far the most psychological of all his thrillers to date, relying more on the inner workings of the mind, the fears that plague, the flashbacks, the self-doubts. We are drawn in because we like Markarian, maybe even identify with his humanity and sense of frailty, and we are terrified because he may indeed be evil.
Picking it up to finish was like covering one’s eyes in a scary movie but parting two fingers just enough to see what's happening, because you're scared and fascinated at the same time. To call SKIN DEEP an engaging medical thriller isn't enough. It's chilling. To the bone.
--- Reviewed by Roberta O’Hara
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