The Book of Matthew by Thomas White

People are dying in the creepiest weirdest way ever imagined in the new novel, The Book of Matthew: a macabre novel of suspense by Thomas White. It falls on San Francisco homicide inspector, Clemson Yao and his intrepid partner, a local Realtor, Angie Strachan to end this spree. Angie isn’t your typical Realtor though. She once attempted to become the city’s first woman homicide inspector, but was kicked off the force when she killed a suspect/perpetrator instead of arresting him. The serial killer being sought is one of the more compelling baddies found in modern novels. He cheerfully calls his victims, “messies”, and spends untold hours researching methods for killing them. This grisly murderer has searched the globe for all the ways of brutal torture that can kill in the slowest way possible, and he selects his victim’s deaths from this research.

Disturbing and warped, the book nonetheless is a pretty satisfying novel. I did find that the detailed hallucinatory descriptions of dreams and nightmare sequences got a bit old, and I could have done without most of them. But for originality in a genre filled with twisted bad guys, the author scores a slam-dunk. The dynamic between Yao and Angie was great, and was a solid set up for an entire series featuring them. This is a well-written debut novel and I look forward to seeing more from Thomas White.