Bloody Mary by J.A. Konrath

For a while, I was completely obsessed with Jack Kilborn/J.A. Konrath.  When I read Endurance, Afraid, and Trapped I could not get enough of his stories.  I played around with reading the Jack Daniels mysteries for a while, and even wrote a review on Stirred.  In addition to loving J.A. Konrath, I also have an affair with the free Kindle books section on Amazon, so when Bloody Mary appeared there this week, I thought I'd give it a read.

As mentioned before, I just can't picture the character Jack Daniels.  It's driving me nuts.  In the intro, Konrath promised that this book would not have a ton of gratuitous violence. Well, there's still a good amount of violence and even some necrophilia, but I guess it's tame for Konrath.

Bloody Mary is the story of a guy who is chopping up prostitutes and arranging with a creepy dude to creatively dispose of the parts.  This mystery man gets debilitating headaches which can only be alleviated by murder.  Understandable.  As a young model turns up missing, Jack and her partner Herb are on the case. They expertly dig through evidence and find clues, ending (you think!) in quite the public standoff.  But what should be the "end" is actually only half the book, as the twist leads to another winding plot.

I definitely liked this book, and burned through it in two days, having a hard time putting it down.  The one thing I did not love about this particular story was the Jack Daniels personal backstory.  I just did not get her little love triangle, or the decisions she made.  The mom was an interesting character addition, as was the cat.  Although, I would be interested to know if Konrath has ever actually spent more than 5 minutes with a cat.  They would never wear a diaper in a million years, they don't drink milk, and even the meanest cat I've ever known has never latched itself on someone's head multiple times!

As for this book, it's a fun quick read,  and still free on Kindle as of this moment!