Image from Google.com this time
This novel is classified as YA because the protagonist is a teenager. While I don’t read a lot of YA, this one was quite good.
John Wayne Cleaver has a specific set of rules to stop himself from becoming a serial killer. It doesn’t help that his mom and aunt run a mortuary out of their home. John likes to help with the embalming process and get up close and personal with dead bodies. They feel normal to him, demanding nothing of him, and he can be himself around them.
A person is killed behind a laundromat and this body has something different about it – it seems to be part of a calculated kill. John believes this is the work of a serial killer. John knows all the signs because he’s studied them thoroughly.
He investigates, even though it breaks one of his rules to do so. What he finds shocks him and thrusts him into a new world, one where the danger is outside himself instead of lurking within.
The novel ends in a way that I felt was a bit too easy, but then I saw it’s YA and yeah, that makes sense. There are four other books in the series. I may check them out. I liked the narrative style and the internal dialogue of this one, so I might like the others.
Should Be Writing 