The Skin Collector by Jeffery Deaver

The Skin Collector

Things in my life have been crazy the last few months.I had this book on pre-order as soon as it was available. I anxiously wait for it to arrive on release day so I could start it. I did and then never had time to read anything but audio books. Deaver is one of those authors I have to read every word of, I don't want to miss a thing and sometimes with an audio book I miss little bits. The whole time that this sat on my shelf partially read was driving me nuts. I loved this book from the very beginning and it bothered me I couldn't pick this up again. Well this weekend my kids were great and let me read. I couldn't stop turning pages. I flew through the end of this book. 

Alright, enough about me and on to the book. I loved this book and couldn't get enough. I have read quite a few bad reviews about this book and I disagree. I thought there was a lot of tension and suspense in this book. Deaver has yet again created memorable characters and twist and turns that kept surprising me till the end. The book begins with one of the most interesting and original serial killers I have ever read. Our killer is drugging his victims so they are knocked out and then he Tattoos them using poison instead of ink. They die horribly painful deaths from the toxin in their bodies and the tattoos are messages to a much bigger picture. I loved this, I never would have thought to write a character who kills by poison tattoos. 

The link to the Bone Collector is small but it allows for Deaver to bring  in the character Pam who has become sort of a surrogate child to Rhyme and Sacks. I really like her character and it was nice to see more in this book. We also have a small Watchmaker story line at the very beginning. Even I was wondering what place this was going to have in the story but the ending tied that in very nicely. 

Deaver has made some changes to the way he wrote this book and I guess that changes have caused some to not enjoy this as much. One of the big changes is the fact that it seems like we spend more time with our villain than he did with Rhyme and Sacks. I liked that, the killer was an interesting character and he was written very well. I also read a few reviews that said this was very political. I don't think it was political at all. He isn't like Stephen King who likes to slam home his political views when he can. There wasn't any nudging one way or the other with political views. I'm not sure what other reviewers were seeing that I didn't but we are all entitled to our opinions so I will not put anyone down for what someone thinks. 

I honestly could go on like for what would seem like forever about how much I loved this book. This wasn't as amazing as The October List or the Bone Collector, but there wasn't anything I didn't like about this book. This is easily a 5 out of 5 star read for me. The very end does open things up for possibly the next book in the Rhyme series and I can't wait to see what happens. 

This will be the third book for me in the RIP challenge. I am so glad that I was able to finish this book in time to submit my review for this challenge. I love this challenge and already have more than the four books in line for this challenge. Can't wait to see how many of those I can finish before the end of the challenge.