Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing plot line, albeit fairly well written
Review: This is the first John Saul novel I've ever read. I hope his others aren't this formulatic and drawn out, only to reveal a disappointing conclusion.The story is one that, sadly, has been done over and over again in print AND on film. Anne Jeffers, ace reporter, watches serial killer Richard Kraven, whom she helped convict, die in the electric chair. At almost the same time, thousands of miles away, Anne's husband suffers a massive heart attack. Dead for over two minutes, Glen Jeffers recovers, but his personality is just never the same. The gruesome murders attributed to Richard Kraven start all over again - four years after his incarceration. Who can be the killer? Is there an accomplice? Are these copy cat murders? Who can say? Unfortunately, anyone who's ever seen the movie "Fallen" or an old 1980's horror film (the name of which escapes me now), knows what has happened. Saul throws a few mugafins our way, but to anyone experienced in reading a variety of books can see right through the fluff. The most disappointing aspect of the book is that the ending feels thrown together. It's as if Saul had a specific number of pages that he had to supply to his publisher, and he didn't want to go below or above that number. In short, the book just sort of ends. It's not satisfying. The police in this book are more bumbling than the team that investigated the Jean Benet Ramsay case in Colorado. They haven't investigated all their leads and the proof that Kraven was the serial killer is never really fleshed out. The central characters don't act believably and the trains of thought displayed don't follow a logical flow. And when was the last time you heard of a convicted murderer on death row being executed within four years of his incarceration? Four decades maybe - four years - never! I wanted to like this book, because the writing wasn't bad as a whole. Sure, it was a pulp novel - I knew it would be - but it wasn't poorly written - just poorly thought out and executed.
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