Let Down! (The Skin Gods - Richard Montanari)

Member Name: dizzysummer03

Product:	The Skin Gods - Richard Montanari
Date:	29/08/09 (15 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Well written

Disadvantages: Rubbish ending, hard to follow in places

The Skin Gods is written by Sunday Times bestselling author Richard Montanari, who is also the author of the bestselling thriller 'The Rosary Girls.'

The main characters in the book are Detective Kevin Byrne & Detective Jessica Balzano.

When a video of Alfred Hitchcock's legendary horror film psycho is taken to the police, a horrific crime is discovered, in the middle of the movie somebody has edited over the famous murder in the shower scene with their own murder scene and left the film in a small rental shop for an unsuspecting person to find. With an apparent homicide on their hands, but no body, no crime scene and no suspects, the homicide team at Philidelphia are left clutching at straws to work out what happened.

A lightbulb moment by Detective Balzano leads to the body, but more films and more bodies start appearing. The two detectives and team, along with a special agent from the FBI must race against time as the violence rapidly escalates and for Detective Byrne becomes very very personal.

I was recommended this book by one of the staff at my local library, and although the book was ok, it wasn't as good as I had expected given this recommendation.

I enjoyed the plotline, it was unique and enthralling, however I quite regularly found myself thinking 'who is this person?' and 'what's their connection in all of this?' My husband read the book before me and he thought that the book was meant to be like this in places, maybe it was, it definitely didn't work for me though. I like to know what's going on and be able to follow the story easily!

The ending was the ultimate let down really, it was as if the writer wanted to put in a final twist, but was clutching at straws to come up with something and what they did come up with was, to be blunt rubbish! I was really disappointed by it, it didn't do it for me at all. The person who was actually the murderer seemed to have been picked at random, it wasn't like you could look back and think 'aah yes the clues were there!' - unless of course I just missed them completely!

This is a Sunday Times bestseller, so it must have achieved that status for a reason, however I'm sorry to say it didn't do it for me!

Summary: Won't be in a hurry to read anything else by this author!