Into character. Into frame. Into legend. (The Skin Gods - Richard Montanari)

Member Name: KKSlider1337

Product:	The Skin Gods - Richard Montanari
Date:	09/09/08 (27 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gets better and better as it progresses, interesting and exciting storyline.

Disadvantages: Can be confusing at the start and takes a while to get into.

I hadn't read for ages, despite being a very enthusiastic reader when I was younger. I thought it was definitely time to get back into it, and this book was what I chose to start with. Despite initially being unimpressed, as the book progressed it just got better and better.

The story focuses on two detectives who look into the murder of several innocents by the so called "Actor," a crazy serial-killer who likes to re enact his favourite grisly scenes from films. The first killing is the re enactment of the famous shower scene from Psycho, and then with some technical wizardry the Actor replaces the real scene with his own on a rental tape, and returns it to the store for some unlucky customer to rent out.

As I said, this book takes a while to get into but it's definitely worth it and was a good book to get me back into reading. The case the story revolves around is very interesting, albeit not for those sickened too easily. There are some excellent moments of suspense, and twists in the story that really surprised me. The main characters are also quite relatable and I like how there were around 100 short chapters, and with pretty much every chapter-change it would change the perspective of the story, first telling you about the two detectives in third person and then switching to the Actor in first person for example. This kept the story very refreshing and told it from several different angles. The only downside of this was that it could occassionally get confusing as with each new chapter you'd have to readjust to the style and character it was now talking about. This is a minor gripe though.

One of the best parts of the book unsurprisingly is the end; the book progressively gets better and by the end I found it very hard to put down; it has such an exciting climax. Overall I highly recommend this book and plan to read others in the series by Richard Montanari.

Summary: Skin Good.