Nature of Evil

✍ Scribed by Robert W. Stephens

• Book ID: 111256233
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 146 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9781470091361

✦ Synopsis

Nature of Evil

By: Robert W. Stephens

ISBN 10: 1470091364
ISBN 13: 9781470091361
ISSN:
ISFDB Publication Record #
ASIN: B0085KHDK2
British National Bibliography System Number:
Canadian National Catalogue (AMICUS) Number:
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication:
National Library of Australia Bib ID:
OCLC Number:
(OCoLC):
eISBN 10:
eISBN 13: 9781621104582
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number:
Publisher: Eleven 22 Entertainment (2012)

Historical Fiction, Serial Killer, Murder Mystery,

Rome, 1948. Twenty women are brutally murdered, their throats slit and their faces removed with surgical precision. Then the murders stop as abruptly as they started, and the horrifying crimes and their victims are lost to history. Now over sixty years later, the killings have begun again. This time in America. It’s up to homicide detectives Marcus Carter and Angela Darden to stop the murders, but how can they catch a serial killer who leaves no traces of evidence and no apparent motive other than the thirst for murder? The only cryptic clue they have to go on is the three letters “MAI” the killer carves into the flesh of his victims.

Kirkus Reviews:

A murder mystery lifted straight from the diary of a serial killer.

Stephens (Aloha Means Goodbye, 2012) introduces a cycle of murder doomed to repeat itself. Marcus Carter and his partner, Angela Darden, are investigating a series of disturbing homicides when the killer’s pattern suddenly changes.

Instead of targeting only female prostitutes, whose faces he removes post-mortem with a knife, the murderer starts victimizing people close to Marcus: his grandfather, who recently passed away, and even Angela’s own family. In between the action, Stephens keeps readers engaged with glimpses into the journal entries of a madman whose killing spree in the 1940s matches some of the details in the present-day murders. Each time readers step inside his head, they learn a little more about the psychology behind the crimes.

To the killer, who receives his instructions from a demon, the only way to speak to God is to work with the devil. As the case unravels, Stephens uses supernatural influences in place of scientific explanations, and only at the end does he offer a less fantastical theory. Still, the lack of a traditional smoking gun makes for an unsettling read, even if it does lay out a premise that’s been explored before, most notably in Hollywood. This version reads like a series of plot points; characterizations aren’t much deeper than what’s necessary to drive events forward and maintain suspense. For many readers, though, this murderous tale will be a page-turner, an easily digestible thriller with a few effective images—creepy mannequins that appear seemingly from nowhere; the sagging, peeled faces of the dead; and disembodied voices that speak of unstoppable evil.

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