{"id":7116,"date":"2020-01-07T21:48:21","date_gmt":"2020-01-08T01:48:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/?p=7116"},"modified":"2020-01-07T21:52:30","modified_gmt":"2020-01-08T01:52:30","slug":"book-review-nine-elms-by-robert-bryndza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/book-review-nine-elms-by-robert-bryndza\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Nine Elms (Kate Marshall Book 1) by Robert Bryndza"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Nine Elms <\/em>by Robert Bryndza<\/p>\n

Thomas & Mercer, 2019<\/p>\n

ISBN: 978-1-542005-68-5<\/p>\n

Availability: Hardcover,\u00a0 paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD<\/p>\n

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When it comes to reading choices, there are a LOT of crime thrillers featuring a female detective as the lead available, and many of them get turned into a series of books.\u00a0 For a book to stand out from the competition, the story and writing has to be very good.\u00a0 Robert Bryndza’s new book Nine Elms <\/em>meets both of the criteria.\u00a0 Excitement, good story development, solid characters, unexpected plot twists\u2026 all the elements are there.\u00a0 It won’t be any surprise to see heroine Kate Marshall return for another go-around in a second book, and continue what looks to be a the start of yet another enjoyable series.<\/p>\n

The book starts fifteen years prior, with a 26 page lead-in to the main story.\u00a0 Kate is a detective, on the trail of a killer known as the Nine Elms Cannibal (although he doesn’t eat his victims, he simply takes a few bites out of each of them).\u00a0 The author takes a nice swing at the media, when it’s revealed that despite the lack of actual cannibalism, the media hung the nickname on the killer in their never-ending quest for sensationalism.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Kate catches the killer and becomes a hero, but she quickly becomes the goat due to her relationship with the killer, and she resigns from the police force.<\/p>\n

Jump ahead 15 years: Kate is a professor of criminology at a local college.\u00a0 She receives a letter out of the blue from a family who found new evidence in the case of their daughter’s murder, which happened 20 years ago.\u00a0 They want to hire her to look into it, since the police aren’t interested.\u00a0 Kate and her academic assistant, Tristan, reluctantly agree.\u00a0 Another string of grisly murders starts at the same time, and Kate sees similarities between the Nine Elms Cannibal killings, the new ones, and the cold case of the daughter.\u00a0 Kate and Tristan are slowly but surely drawn into the fray.\u00a0 It’s a race to track down the new killer, and find out how all three cases tie together.<\/p>\n

Author Bryndza writes with a sure hand, like the seasoned literary veteran of detective writing he is.\u00a0 No wasted words, no overdevelopment, and no slow parts: every chapter guns along at a fast clip and rolls right into the next chapter, guaranteed to keep you turning pages.\u00a0 Of course, half the fun of these books is trying to guess the killer’s identity, and Bryndza does a good job keeping it hidden until close to the end.\u00a0 It’s usually done one of two ways in crime thrillers: the killer was introduced as someone living behind a mask in the beginning, or he doesn’t make an actual appearance until partway through.\u00a0 The author chooses the correct one here for maximum effect.\u00a0 It helps that the story has three threads to work off of, as the original Nine Elms killer still does play a significant role throughout the book, and an important part in the climax.\u00a0 For readers that always need the “why?” question answered as to the killer’s motives, Bryndza does provide enough explanation for both killers.\u00a0 It’s not overly done, just enough to make sense and keep the story rolling.\u00a0 \u00a0His characters are also nicely done in shades of gray: they are not just one-dimensional, especially Kate.\u00a0 She’s not perfect, and has her weaknesses like everyone else.<\/p>\n

As Dabney Coleman famously said to Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond, “<\/em>what’s the bottom line here\u2026?” The bottom line for Nine Elms <\/em>is, if you like crime thrillers, you don’t want to miss this one.\u00a0 It isn’t quite up to the gold standard that Graham Masterton set for detective novels with his Katie Maguire series, but it’s a strong contender for the silver.\u00a0 Recommended.<\/p>\n

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Contains: violence, profanity, mild gore<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nine Elms by Robert Bryndza Thomas & Mercer, 2019 ISBN: 978-1-542005-68-5 Availability: Hardcover,\u00a0 paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD   When it comes to reading choices, there are a LOT of crime thrillers featuring a female detective as the lead available, and many of them get turned into a series of books.\u00a0 For a book<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2474,450,1178,4279,4280,2213,3502],"class_list":["post-7116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-book-review","tag-crime-fiction","tag-human-horror","tag-nine-elms","tag-robert-bryndza","tag-serial-killer-fiction","tag-thriller-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7116"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7215,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7116\/revisions\/7215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}