Red Dragon

Certain characters rise above the basic idea of a crazed killer to become a pop culture phenomenon. Norman Bates from Psycho has been firmly planted in the minds of the public since the 1960’s as a memorably unique character. However, in more recent pop culture, the idea of a psychotic serial killer is exemplified by one highly intellectual doctor, Hannibal Lecter. Reading his debut in Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, his infamy is easy to recognize, even as a more minor character. With a book this good, it’s impossible not to have iconic characters and a permeant mark on the horror genre to spring forth.

To be clear, Red Dragon has two fascinating psychotic serial killer adversaries for the FBI and Will Graham to contend with. Lecter isn’t the primary threat, as he is locked up securely throughout the course of the story. The Red Dragon (the press initially calls him the Tooth Fairy) is the killer on the loose.

The Dragon is well built as a psycho; a shy man with an extreme case of low self-esteem and body-dysmorphic issues based on his hare-lip. Harris includes a backstory section that gives the reader the opportunity to see how the Dragon grew into the serial killer he is, yet he is careful to leave the tid-bits in the past for the reader to construct for themselves. Specifics on his trauma from his mentally ill grandmother as well as his unloving mother and step family seep into his method of killing and choice of victims. This was done brilliantly to allow the audience the feeling of piecing the Dragon’s mind together themselves. It also created a twinge of sympathy for the man, while building disgust of him by his actions.

At the same time, Harris takes care to give Lecter a chilling sense of mystery. Graham isn’t able to give any more insight into why Lecter kills besides the fact that he enjoys it. Lecter is unnervingly calm and calculating. His interactions with Graham and the Dragon are limited, yet the reader gets the sense he is manipulating some of the action, watching over the other characters and deriving pleasure from the blood spilt. His code to give the Dragon Graham’s home address leads not only to the end demise of the Dragon, but the eventual erosion of Graham’s marriage and physical harm to Graham. Readers can’t help but wonder if Lecter had planned this all along. While the Dragon draws some understanding and a bit of pity from the audience, Lecter is irresistible interesting without explanation. It’s no wonder audiences have been insatiable for the character ever since.

Will Graham is also a well-developed character. The audience instantly identifies with him from the opening scene- a man who has put his demons behind him to have a relaxed family life only to have the past pull him back. I think everyone can sympathize with that, people are often plagued by the past. Readers might identify with him as an empath type character that must confront human violence in its extreme over and over again. He’s not the gloating, glory seeking hero, which is refreshing. His intuition isn’t magical either. There is a whole cast of specialists that add to his natural gut-feeling. The hunt for the Dragon is pieced together a clue at a time, not in a quick accurate succession. Graham does find a way into the killer’s head, but it is hard and painfully won. Although Graham wasn’t the most interesting of the characters (who really can compete with two bizarre psychos?), he does manage to hold his own in the story. I cared about his and his family’s safety enough to feel the tension in the story.

I felt adding in the Reba McClane character to disrupt the killer’s routine was an interesting twist. People expect that psychos have a pattern that is repeated over and over again. Harris explores here what would happen if something occurred in such a life changing way that the pattern is broken. The Dragon has a set ideas of himself and the world, and along comes this beautiful blind woman (careful crafted to be a strong individual and not just some helpless victim) that gives him evidence the world is not as he has assumed. His concerns about his physical appearance don’t matter to her, and he is confronted with a genuinely loving interaction with a woman which he never had expereinced before. Harris splits the Dragon from the man and records the battel between them for the reader. I’m not sure exactly how I feel about this deviation for the killer. While this was an interesting peek into the complicated workings of the killer’s mind, it felt as if we had gotten off track as far as plot goes. Suddenly the next family on the list took a backseat and the possible redemption took over. It also made the surprise attack at the end awkward. The reader now perceives the Dragon as a troubled man, not a soulless killing machine. Having this character ruthlessly attack Graham in the manner he did just didn’t sit completely right with me. For some reason, I felt slightly disappointed.

The investigation felt authentic for the most part. At some points, it did seem that Graham had some special treatment I wasn’t positive he could get, such as being able to wander through the Leedes’ house/crime scene alone and being able to visit Lecter on a whim. However, I honestly have no idea what the FBI is actually capable of, so maybe I’m not the best person to judge the authenticity. Nothing popped out to me to be incredible inaccurate.

I would like to add that in many ways, The Sculptor felt like a poorly executed imitation of this book after examining them side by side.

Overall, this is a great read. Any little slips of head-hopping POV and such are invisible under the strong storytelling. A solid read that anyone who enjoys a good psycho and a creepy story. 

The Sculptor

Nothing is more of a letdown than a book that has a good concept but was executed poorly. The Sculptor by Gregory Funaro is definitely one of those books that underwhelms when it could have been something unique. From the plot, to the setting, to the unrealistic killer, this is a nightmare of a disappointing read.

Some of the concepts behind the killer caught my interest. I’ve long since been interested in Bodyworlds and the plastination process. The idea of a human being preserved in such a manner without consent is both unnerving and uncanny. Having the killer utilize this new preservation technique is a fascinating idea. Then Funaro adds an obsession with Michelangelo to the killer, so that he uses the plastination process to create replicas of the artist’s sculptures from human flesh. I’m still in. Sounds like a creepy yet smart sort of killer who selects his victims based on more than pure emotional/sexual gratification. Now add in some weird “awakening from the stone” purpose crud with incest and physical abusive mommy issues. Pile on warped homosexual urges, confusing spiritual revelations, and genius intellect. But, that’s not all! This guy is also a highly skilled chemist that is so buff he can lift a statue that took four FBI agents to carry. Plus, he’s a multi-millionaire. Sound believable? Yeah, I didn’t think so either. This psycho is conveniently overkill on every level he needs to be to the point he’s basically the Terminator (for the record, the book does reference him as looking like the Terminator).

The villain is perfect in every way he needs to be to not only kill but explain where his psychotic tendencies originated. Sadly, everyone else is perfectly suited to their role in the story as well. Pretty Dr. Cathy Hildebrant is flawless heroine material. Her only fault is putting up with her cheating ex for too long, however that was remedied by divorce at the beginning of the book. She has already moved on. FBI Agent Sam Markham is the perfect hero, using personal tragedy in his past to fuel his need to stop serial killers. They fall into a predictable romance, which works surprisingly well to track down the killer and save each other from him. Everything in pretty little boxes that are wrapped up in matching bows.

The plot is the standard serial killer on the loose, FBI agent on the case while protecting the main female character who the killer has a particular interest in. Yep, that straightforward. It’s been done into the ground. I think what makes this plot exceptional irritating is that there was no new spin on that formulaic structure. Actually, it wasn’t even done well as just the basic plotline. The authorities figure everything out about the killer like magic. There are no real surprises in their investigation. They actual use many of the phrases identically to the way the sculptor uses them, like referring to the people he kills as “materials” and guessing his vague “awaken from the stone” motivations. The POV hops head at random places when the  author felt someone else’s perspective was better at the moment, then hops somewhere else. My point is, all the characters, the POV, and the plot points were conveniently perfect to move the story along the way it needed to go.

Funaro did his research for this book. I’m sure he went through mounds of articles and books on Michelangelo to get all the information required for this novel. It shows, because he dishes out large chunks of this research in wads of info dumps throughout the story.  A large amount of the text was occupied by conversations that went into long speeches of background information on Michelangelo, his history, and theories regarding the artist and his work. At several points, Markham is discussing these topics with Cathy, who is an expert on Michelangelo, and reading her sections of her own book. At one point, he actually say “as you know” to her before going into a word vomit about information she already knew that came from her own book. This hurt some soft squishy place inside me. Why go through all the trouble to do such detailed research only to present it in info dumps that don’t engage the reader? Why?

As much as Funaro took steps to ensure the reader got ever bit of the information on Michelangelo he felt was necessary for the story, the sensory details and setting is severely lacking in this book. I forgot on several occasions where we were as far as location goes, not that the area itself was of any importance in the story. It could have taken place anywhere in the country and would have played out the same. No particular smells or sounds that left any impression me or engaged me deeper into the story. Funaro stuck mainly to describing the visual, except when he goes into the sensations of the painful “awakening” deaths. This only served to distance me further from the story.

The biggest let-down of this book was the ending. The overpowered villain is easily tricked by Cathy as she magically understands his twisted history with his mother in a sudden revelation. Cathy proceeds to hit all the right notes to get the sculptor to release her, as if she had studied his past in detail. Interesting, I didn’t realize she was psychic before that scene, but she must have been in order to pull off that performance. Our Hero, Sam, miraculously manages to survive numerous gunshots in order to save the heroine at just the right moment. She, in turn, is able to save them both moments later while everything goes up in over-budget explosions. Ka-boom! Yet, the final few paragraphs prove the Terminator style sculptor has survived the unsurviable in order to kill again. The whole ending is unrealistic and ridiculous. All I can guess is that the author wrote himself into a corner having Cathy captured by the sculptor and decided that he had no other option than to go all out unbelievable to wrap up the book.

One final thing I would like to note about this book is on themes and meanings. Funaro hinted, repeatedly, at several themes in this book but none of them panned out to make any sort of significant meaning. The “awakening from the stone” motive throughout the book was vague in that it seemed to be about the dwindling intellectual content of entertainment and arts in the modern world, then became about realizing the buried fear of life through death, and then about personal spiritual revelations that connected the sculptor to Christ in weird incest pact with his mother. By the end, it made zero sense what the sculptor hoped to accomplished with the killing or what the point of the book was. The same goes for the homosexual themes. Originally, the killer was profiled as being attracted only to males, mirroring Michelangelo, and only using males for his sculptures. I thought there was going to be some sort of theme building there about the cruel treatment he received regarding his sexual orientation that lead in part to his need to kill. Instead, the story shifted away from that towards the sexual relationship between the killer and his mother. I’m particularly fond of messages and themes in books. I want to feel a story has made me think about something, especially if it’s in a new light. In this story, nothing panned out. I would have rather there been no themes or underlying message at all than a bunch of weak attempts that amounted to nothing.

Overall, this a great book to show what not to do with a psycho. Even if you’re a fan of structured plots that give reader exactly what they are expecting, the info dumps and blandly perfect characters will likely leave an unsatisfying taste in your mouth. Now, I’m going to go take my copy of this book, soak it in acetone and light it on fire. Hopefully, it won’t survive.

The Church of Dead Girls

There is something magically to a reader about a book that opens with a great scene that sets the mood for the rest of the story to follow. On the other hand, there is something extremely frustrating about a story that doesn’t live up to that first scene. Sadly, The Church of Dead Girls by Stephen Dobyns falls into the latter category for me. Perhaps if I had started this book as a crime thriller I would be praising where it works well, but I found it disappointing.

The beginning chapter gives the reader a detailed tour of an attic where three dead girls are propped up and decorated in a deliciously creepy manner. The specifics of the scene hint at a psycho outside of the typical strangle/stab/shoot and dump the body sort of murder. Dobyns wets the audience’s appetite with this opening. I was itching to jump into this killer’s head and get to the juicy bits of crazy floating around in there. I was ready to tear into the book. However, I found the next chapters a letdown as the story pivoted away from being about a killer to the paranoia of a small dreary town where everyone knows everybody else’s business. It felt like being sold a ticket to an action movie and sitting through a historical drama that had a few battle scenes.

Dobyns builds the town of Aurelius believably. The cast of characters fill the range one would expect in every small town, from the trouble makers, to the political pot stirring outsider, to the tragic widower now a single parent, to the promiscuous woman that’s heated up the sheets of nearly every man in town. The issue I have with this approach is that the list of Aurelius’ inhabitants is long and annoying to read through. Everyone has history and people have complicated relationships with each other. It was difficult to connect deeply with any of the characters. I didn’t find any of them really likeable either, but I think part of that was the distance. These were people I was hearing about from afar rather than experiencing the story through them. I was peeping in their town, listening at the door and looking through windows. Dobyns may have put these characters at a distance to purposely give the reader the feel of spying on this little community and to provide a good chunk of suspects. However, this kept me from becoming invested in the characters and made much of this a chore to read.

The strange first person POV also kept me at a distance. The unnamed narrator is retelling the story much like someone gossiping at times. Other times, the narrator switches into a weirdly omniscient voice that is able to recount other character’s feelings and events that our first person narrator couldn’t possibly have any knowledge about. Not only is this an unreliable narrator, he’s an inconsistent and impossible one. I didn’t find the narrator any more likeable than the townsfolk, although I did empathize with him a smidgen more. He feels like an outsider in this community yet is roped into the town’s drama. Growning up in a small town myself that I didn’t fit well in, I can understand the narrator on that level. Beyond that, I felt as removed from him as I did with everyone else in Aurelius.

The slow deterioration of the town into chaos as the girls disappeared was well done. As I mentioned before, had I gone into this book from a thriller perspective I think I would have enjoyed it more. Watching the suspicions flare up the prejudices that lie just beneath the surface of the town was as chilling as the murders. In a way, the killer is almost an afterthought as the decent of the town consumes the majority of the plot. The group mentality here is unnerving; those considered outsiders are targeted first. The longtime residents can’t fathom that one of their own could possibly be responsible for the missing girls. The death of the new professor, who brought his Marxist viewpoints to the sleepy town, was a nice touch on showing the radical opposition to any ideas or beliefs that are not accepted by the community. Once the citizens turn on each other, violence and vandalism are rationalized as “doing the right thing” when in fact it is fear that is driving them. The case clearly made that no one can hide in a seemingly safe place from the evils of humanity.

The ending was handled with a heavy dose of symbolism. The killer is shot in the back, thereby betrayed, by his own brother, which mirrors how neighbor turned on neighbor throughout the ordeal. The cutting off of the left hand by the killer is his acceptance of his own sexual/dirty nature. The interesting twist at the end of the narrator stealing the killer’s hand and preserving it wrapped up the theme of the story perfectly – the brutal and sexual urges that plagued the killer can be found in everyone, so there is no one you can trust.

Overall, this is probably a better book than I’m giving it credit for here. I expected a story centered on a psychopathic murder, and when I didn’t get that story I was immediately discouraged. My disappointment colored my reading. Though the book is not without its faults, I will probably read it again the in the future as there were parts that interested me. So, if you’re looking for a book about a killer, look elsewhere. If you want a creepy glimpse into small town hysteria, this might be worth a read.