Evil at Heart

Evil at Heart by Chelsea Cain in the third in a series featuring female serial killer Gretchen Lowe and her long suffering and conflicted pursuer, police detective Archie Sheridan. In Heartsick, the first novel, Archie is trying to track the beauty killer (her serial killer signature- she carves hearts into her victims) and meets up with Gretchen posing as a psychiatrist.  Here begins Archie and Gretchen's sick and twisted relationship.  He is both attracted and repelled by her, and she is drawn to him but doesn't hesitate to mutilate and torture him.  The second book, Sweetheart,S is so traumatic for our boy Archie that he ends up in a mental ward, which is where he is when book 3 opens.  Gretchen has recently escaped from prison, which the media tracks like a sport- Gretchen is quite the poster girl for serial killers because of her beauty, brains and brutality.  Gretchen promises Archie she won't kill again, if he won't come after her.  Of course bodies start popping up everywhere that mirror Gretchen's crimes.  The question is whether she's doing them, or if they're copy cat killings of an ardent fan, of which Gretchen has many.  Funky reporter Susan Ward is back and she manages to drag Archie back into the thick of the manhunt for Gretchen.  The twisted relationship between Gretchen and Archie continues to grow as the mystery behind the murders increases.

I enjoyed Evil at Heart for the most part.  These books are not for the faint of heart.  Bad, gross, and disturbing things happen.  In this installment there's a bit of an obsession with extreme body piercing that my poor little mind probably could have done without.  Because I'm invested in the series I don't even know if I can tell if the books are good or bad, I care about the characters although they are all deeply flawed.  I think Heartsick was a good book, Gretchen is a female Hannibal Lector and who doesn't love a charming serial killer?  I feel that in Sweetheart and Evil at Heart the author pushes too hard to keep the action going at times.  But still, I can't put these books down.  I want to know what happens, even if I have to read things that make me squeamish.    Cain doesn't get quite as sadistic as Richard Laymon, but she knows her way around a torture chamber.  I read the Dexter books as well, but there's humor in Jeffrey Lindsay's books that you won't find in Chelsea Cain novels.  They are dark and dreary, but entertaining enough for this Midnight Book Girl.

Evil at Heart gets a Midnight Book Rating of 10pm.  It'll keep you up all night, but it'll probably give you bad dreams.