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Messiah
"It's not hard to select your victims, if you know where to look." p. 360
Detective Superintendent Redfern Metcalf is obsessed with murderers. He can get inside their heads and learn what motivates them. In Messiah, Red, along with three other detectives from Scotland Yard, Jez Clifton, Kate Beauchamp, and Duncan Warren struggle to discover the link between the victims of gruesome and terrifying murders. They race time to uncover why each victim is found massacred, sometimes beyond recognition, each with their tongue severed, and a silver spoon lodged in their mouths. They know that they must find the victim's connection to each other before the murderer can be stopped.
Red Metcalfe becomes involved with Scotland Yard as an indirect result of a murder involving his younger brother Eric Metcalfe. After a traumatic visit to his brother, Red hits a young boy with his car and leaves him for dead. Red finds the courage to go to the police station and turn himself in, but finds himself inquiring about a job with the police force instead. As a result, Red becomes a detective who develops a gift for tracking murderers by learning what makes them tick. Unfortunately his obsession with murderers is born from a frightening ability to relate to them. This becomes Red Metcalfe's downfall.
The author details eleven murders throughout the story. Each murder is different, but all are terrifyingly gruesome. The method of killing, although unimaginably grotesque, becomes as important to discovering the link between the victims as their names do. Once the four investigators discover the link, they must race against time to prevent any further murders. But their efforts to warn the next potential victims are in vain. The murderer outwits their warnings based solely on his trustworthy appearance to the victims.
At the conclusion of the novel, the author throws an interesting twist to the reader that connects the murderer's motive to one of the main character's pasts. Not only does Red Metcalfe succeed in stopping the murderer before he can kill the remainder of his victims; Red Metcalfe creates a dangerous new murderer that must be stopped before he can strike again.
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