The Body Counter

Jude is a puzzle, a fascinating psychological presentation of a character coming back to herself after years in captivity! Jude was tortured, raped and kept in a dark box in a basement for three years. Thats messed her up, of course, but also given her the gift of heightened perception when listening to other people. Her heart is filled with sorrow, pain, and fear, PTSD for sure, but a wonderful empathy for victims as well. Jude was and is a good homicide Detective. Famous, yes, for more backstory than this! Judes partner, Uriah Ashby, is the Head Homicide Detective, and he is also a little messed up. His wife committed suicide, he blames himself, and he gets horrible migraines. Then there is the neighbor below her, Elliot, who has to bang on the ceiling to stop her from screaming during her nightmares. In spite of all this going on, Jude and Uriah make a great deductive pair. The case they are trying to solve involves a strange mathematical sequence and Manson-like murders. The suspense is wrapped up with emotion and twists to the storyline. Complex and brilliantly imaginative, these characters will stay with you for a while. Stands alone well, with unexpected surprises at the end.

I don\’t remember learning about the Fibonacci sequence in high school or college math, but it\’s certainly a unique murder method. The sequence goes: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13…and so on, so the killer/s are aiming for a high body count. The murders are grisly, and seem to get more so with each crime scene. I did appreciate that it was specifically pointed out how the brutal crime scenes affected the investigators/first responders, I\’ve read other books where the characters are hardly fazed and it seems unrealistic to me. Jude\’s character growth is slow but steady, she\’s not healed, but she has moments of normalcy. Her abduction experience seems to have made her more sensitive and empathetic. But she\’s still battling her demons (she can\’t resist returning to the house where she was held captive), she isn\’t able to put the past behind her yet, though she does take some steps. She and Uriah make a good team, they depend on each other a great deal, but at the same time don\’t expect more from the other than they\’re willing to give. While the book doesn\’t end on a cliffhanger, there\’s some very interesting information revealed at the end, and it has me anxious for the next installment!

(minor spoiler in brackets below) A disappointing continuation, The Body Counter suffers the same issues as the first book (poor crime solving, chaotic pacing at the end) without the benefit of the interesting introduction and characterization of our MC. The main side plots in this one involve Jude\’s handling of \”the house\” and the inclusion of a new neighbor. While the murders are interesting in-themselves, the solution was very unsatisfactory. In fact after a large amount of unproductive leads that paint the killer as a mastermind, [the killer is easily found by a random crazy guy randomly remembering a random poorly-explained coincidence that may/may-not be related, but is actually 100% accurate]. Add to that the detectives suddenly deciding (for no explained reason) that the mastermind was actually a pawn… but of course none of this is ever explained since the real mastermind meets an untimely end.

Loved the first book, and she writes really well, but this one was too dark and disturbing. Really sick. Words like slaughter and gruesome come to mind. Where is her head at? She purchases the house where she was tortured and raped for three years! She even sleeps in the cell one night! Seriously? That\’s bizarre to say the least. After an 8 person massacre, Jade says to herself \”Death was beautiful, even this kind of violent death\”. What??????

Good story until the end. Don\’t have to read the first book to enjoy this one, but a lot of character development is in the first book. This book is not nearly as good as the first, however. I was very surprised to find out Anne Frasier lives up north because she made a couple of big mistakes about MN. In the beginning of this book, she wrote about drinking soda. People up north don\’t drink soda, they drink pop. She later stated the Mississippi River starts at Lake Itaska and not as a creek. That is absolutely false. The Mississippi River starts as a creek coming out of the ground in Itaska State Park. I was born in Minneapolis and lived there until I went to college in Bemidji, MN. I walked across the creek, the headwaters of the Mississippi, where it was less than a foot wide, in 1979 when I was in college. I understand this is a work of fiction, but she wrote accurately about the lakes and other areas in Minneapolis. There was no need for her to write about the head of the Mississippi in the book, let alone specifically give bad information about it. The majority of people who read this book won\’t have any idea that she\’s written false information about this great river in our nation and they\’ll believe it\’s true and may pass on this untruth to others.

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