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Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Review: Puppets by Daniel Hecht

by:  Daniel Hecht
published by:  Bloomsbury Publishing
publish date:  July 11, 2005

The New Jersey State Police had started calling him Howdy Doody, after the famous TV puppet of the 1950s. Three people killed in northern New Jersey, then three in Manhattan and another in the Bronx, in a thirteen-month period. And all of them hung up with strings attached to their limbs, like puppets. Finally the murderer was caught in New York City. Or so it seems--until State Police detective Mo Ford finds another victim, killed and arranged in exactly the same way. Is it a copycat crime, or did the police catch the wrong man? Mo's theory about what happened soon expands to involve U.S. intelligence agencies and a horrific experiment with human beings. With so many forces behind the scenes, who is the real puppet master?

This book was one of my random audiobook finds from the library.  It was one of those computer based suggestion from my past reading history.  I couldn't find anything else I wanted so I figured I'd give it a shot. 

I was really impressed with this book.  I've read a ton of murder mysteries and usually I can get an inkling of what's going to happen in the end or who the real killer will turn out to be.  In this case, while the perpetrator was suspected, I never thought it was possible.  It seemed so unlikely.  Anyway, kudos for surprising me there.

Another thing I really liked about this book in comparison to a lot of murder mysteries out now is that this book focused on the psychology of the crime.  So many books out focus on the forensics, and not the who and WHY. 

This book is considered a prequel to another book called Skull Session.  They're stand alone books, not really related to each other except that they both feature detective Mo Ford.  I would recommend reading Puppets first.  I'll be giving my thoughts on Skull Session in a couple of weeks.

 

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