Customer Reviews

The Angel Maker

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

One of the best thrillers I have read in a while. Tons of suspense, it constantly leaves you hanging, forcing you to read just a little more, and then a bit more still. Even though you know how it will turn out in the end, the interesting and original story will keep you plugged in all the way. Another excellent book that has a somewhat similar plot is Extreme Measures by Michael Palmer.

I generally enjoy Ridley Pearson's books but I have to say that I found The Angel Maker more than a little unpleasant. There is, in truth, a grim fascination with the story, but "grim" is the opperative word. I was never able to escape, while reading this, the oppressive feeling that Pearson was playing an ugly joke on the reader. To use murdering street kids for their organs as a premise for a plot, to make clear who the villain is, and to make the tension of the story revolve around saving one particular potential victim in time, results in an unsatisfactory blend of classic melodrama and contemporary urban myth. I read it, but I didn't like it. Part of the problem, for me, is that I think using kids as victims in crime drama is a cheap appeal for emotion. While kids frequently are the victim of vicious crimes, they are more likely to be victimized by their own family than anonymous psychos and evil doctors.

While there is a story here that many will find sufficiently interesting, I cannot recommend it.

This second rendition by Pearson is not that bad. Why is everybody so grossed out by this title, if you think about it, not as bad as CSI, and some movies that show graphic medical procedures. This has great characters in Mathews and Boldt. Some humor, action, intrigue and suspense, yes some of the descriptions of the operations are graphic but much more tame than a CSI autopsy on TV and I bet these reviewers show put the book down love CSI. I was skeptical after reading some of these reviews before I read the book but I read it anyway and liked it. Pearson is too good not to read.

On one of the reviews the reviewer mentions that the first 100 pages were interesting, then the book became a congealed mass. I agree totally. I can see that Pearson has a lot to give to his reader, but he needs to improve on his stories. Details that matter are left out and ones that don't matter are put in. He is easy reading though and good for a fast ride.

Macabre in its details, this story has everything: subtle madness, dogged police procedures under DEADline pressure, forensic clues, psychological gaming, disgusting crimes, filth, action, desperation, and screaming tension. The pellmell pace is far greater than you'll find in, say, Agatha Christie, and the criminal is known to the reader even as the police grope in the wrong direction (contributing to the reader's tense apprehension). Appropriately for a wet place like Seattle, hydrological science has a critical role in this story, and even more so in its predecessor UNDERCURRENTS. (The third story in the Lou Boldt/Daphne Matthews series is: No Witnesses.) Pearson gives us characters with palpable depth, skillful writing to draw us into the story, and a good sense of place. The villain vet is creepy because he is so rational; you also feel his befuddlement when his humanitarian plans go awry. The moral of the story is that the maxim "the greatest good for the greatest number" is indefensible when a minority are forced to give something up for it.

This is the second in the series for crime solvers Lou Boldt and Daphne Matthews, the psychologist with a past and the scars to prove it, and retired-cop-turned-Mr.-Mom, Lou Boldt. A series of corpses begin to turn up sans some of their inner organs, Daphne begins to put two and two (or two and whatever is left) together. She manages to pull together enough clues to entice her old partner back into the hunt. The story itself if an interesting and novel idea. John Glover's frantic and frenetic read of the story and his unique audio interpretation of each character is riveting if a bit nerve racking as he never lets up and keeps the listener in a constant state of near hysteria. But even such a horror fan as this reviewer has grown to be over the years, this mystery was just a bit too gruesome for me and Pearson's characterization of a live harvesting vicitim was more than I could take. What happened to those plain old garden variety serial killers and psychos of mysteries gone by?

Leave it on the shelf unless you have a strong stomach.

I really enjoyed Undercurernts, the first book with Lou Bolt so I thought I would get the second one, The Angel Maker. Boy was that a mistake. It was way to bloody and gross for me. I may try the third one in the series but if like this one I will be through. The Angel Maker is bad, bad. I did not even finish the book and that is very unusual for me. When Dr. Elden Tegg cut the heart out of a man that was still alive and carried it, bouncing it like ball in his hand, down to the cages and fed it to one of his dogs, I left it. To much, way to much for me. If yo want a book full of blood and gore this is the book for you. If you don't, then pass this one by.

I'd recommend UNDERCURRENTS, but not this one. A good first hundred pages, but the story congeals into a mass of repetitive cliche as you are pounded again and again with the same info, until it picks up pace again in the finale. Some interesting stuff, but this able craftsman stretches the story into boredom land.

Oh no, not another so-called mystery about a villain "harvesting" human organs. Not another"mystery" with a villain who has both a funny name, and tics. Not a mystery.

Elden Teggs, the self-effacing and totally insane, villain of "The Angel Maker" is one of those nuts who you can't believe could get away with what he does. Nor can one believe that some poor chubby girl would fall so head over heels in love with him. But Dr. Teggs says that his organ transplants will save more people. Trouble is, he takes his donors without asking them if they really want to donate. And many of his donors end up dying horrible deaths due to Teggs' sloppy transplants.

Lou Boldt and Daphne Matthews, heroes of other Pearson novels, find themselves enmeshed in this dark doctor's plans, as he kidnaps Daphne's friend, Sharon, and plans on harvesting her heart for a Japanese mobster whose wife is dying.
There are some very gruesome and unsettling scens, but the pace is good, and Pearson keeps his characters interesting and multi-dimensional. The ending leaves us hanging and that marginally detracts from the book's impact. However, a good read.
RECOMMENDED.