Review: "I was bad, now I pay."
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 26, 2014
This is a long, extremely convoluted mystery encompassing the murderer who is dying from cancer, was once a successful author, but now has had over seventy rejections of a second novel he wrote concerning a serial killer.  He doesn't have long to live and decides that seven people have truly screwed him and he will become a serial killer and then reedit his book based on what he knows from the standpoint of a serial killer.The story starts out with a bang where he is killing Dr. Silverman, whom he hates the most, through torture.  This turns out to be a dream that he has quite often.  Then about the next 30% of the story are just dialogues of Richard Calder (the protagonist)  of his thoughts about life, people, other authors and many perspectives seeming to have nothing to do with the plot.  There are few action scenes.  Then the story becomes full of action as Richard seeks out his victims and tortures them to death in various ways.  With each person he kills, the author inserts real life murderers who have killed the same way.  The story becomes a page turner then.Detectives Kevin Wash and Bill Healy follow him all over the United States, investigating murders, which have the same MO as Richard's and through their discussions, the reader learns how the detectives eventually find him.  Richard's brain cancer becomes worse as time passes and more painful each time he is emotionally stressed.  But he has a packet of pain pills, which he utilizes as necessary.  In order to elude law enforcement, he analyzes each murder he performs, seeking to ferret out any mistakes he may have made that would lead the law to him.Eventually the law catches up with him, the cancer is progressively worse and he passes without having murdered the last three people who had wronged him.  This would have been a great place to end the novel, as it has become rather cumbersome because the author has a way of throwing new people into the pot, which confuses the reader.  And instead of stopping at this point, he adds a prologue introducing a new character whom we haven't even noticed, with new problems but intent on finishing the torturous murders for Richard and it is revealed at this point that Richard had left him some instructions and the balance of the cash he had so he could do this.  This prologue adds nothing to the story and in fact, in my estimation ruins the ending of this plot.Although this story would warrant five stars if it had more action and much less dialogue, it is for this reason that I am only giving it four stars.  In fact, before I finally got through the first 30% of the plot, I was only going to give it three stars because I was so bored.  I suggest to the author that in his future writings, he consider what the reader wants rather than all of the trivia he knows and wants to pass on.  I noticed this on his webpage also.  But for readers who like torture, violence and much psychological thought in their mysteries, they will enjoy this story.This e-book was given to me free for an honest review.