Customer Reviews

The Face of Death

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

If you thought Cody Mcfayden was a fluke with a great first novel, you will be pleased to know the man can write like a seasoned veteran.
He continues with Smoky Barrett, the FBI agent who lived through a horror of her own, with a great deal of scarring - not only on her soul, but on her once gorgeous face. That hasn't stopped her from going after evil.
She is called to a gruesome murder scene - a teenage girl with a gun to her head is yelling she will only speak to Smoky Barrett. Smoky goes into the house and into the nightmare of Sarah. Sarah is a girl whose family was murdered when she was a child - she was spared by the murderer. He (the murderer) has an agenda for her...
Mcfadyen takes us on this murderer's journey - he's called The Stranger - and if you were expecting broad strokes of the action - forget it - the language and actions are so strong, you are squirming - almost needing a shower - but his words are powerful.
The same FBI agents and several other characters we came to care about are back in this book. And they do not fail us either.
The Face of Death is a masterful book. Reminded me of early Jeffrey Deaver - but what comes next from Mcfadyen will be a sight to behold.

If you're tired of same old serial killer,psychological thriller stuff,read this,you won't be able to put it down. I agree the great reviews I've just read here,and even emailed the author,and,o boy o boy,more of the "Smoky" series are to come.Just loved these two books,now what do I read?? Whatever it is,it won't be as good.

Cody McFadyen once again using his lurid imagination conjures up another crime thriller overflowing with grotesque violence and tortuous psychological drama in his follow up to "Shadow Man". In "The Face of Death" FBI Special Agent Smoky Barrett, herself subjected to unspeakable duress after her rape and maiming and the murders of her husband and daughter, is called into this latest affair at the behest of the victim.

Barrett and her L.A. based Violent Crimes team respond to a horrific crime scene in the swanky Malibu suburbs. Sixteen year old Sarah Langstrom is found walking around outside bewildered in her blood soaked nightie with a gun pressed to her temple. After being talked down by a sympathetic Barrett, they enter the residence to find a charnel house splattered with blood and the dead bodies of Sarah's foster parents and her beheaded dog Buster. Sarah claims that this slaughter was choreographed by a shadowy stocking masked psycho called The Stranger.

Barrett and her crew with help from a diary that Sarah has kept learned that this wasn't the first time that people in Sarah's life had been slain. At 6 years old her biologic parents has also been murdered in shocking fashion, again apparently by The Stranger. This forced her into the dire world of foster homes and adoption. Sarah's life had been studded with incidents of violence against those that she held most dear.

Barrett was now the adoptive mother of Bonnie, a ten year old daughter of her best friend who had perished at the hands of the Shadow Man. Suffering incredible psychological scars Bonnie, who had come out of her shell in the six months since the murder, was unable to speak. Barrett naturally viewed the now life hardened Sarah as a similar innocent victim.

The FBI team gave the case top priority status and soon discovered that the ghastly treatment of Sarah by The Stranger was based in the past. Their dedoubled efforts strove to detect the identity of serial killing Stranger and stop the path of destruction he was creating.

While "The Face of Death" was without question a gripping page turning thriller, because it followed a similar storyline to "The Shadow Man" it lacked the impact of that novel. McFadyen is a talented writer but I didn't feel any maturation in his writing style in his second offering, just more of the same.

The Face of Death is the second in the series with FBI crimebuster Smoky Barrett and the team of characters in the first book Shadow Man find their way here too. There are several scenes in this book that had me putting it down and walking away because the images the words on the page stuck in my brain were downright disturbing. If a book has the power to do that, then it is a book worth reading. If you can handle the grittiness of other thrillers like that of Karin Slaughter and Robert W. Walker, then you are going to become a Mcfadyen fan quickly.

I always wonder if a second novel will live up to the first - if the first was outstanding. In this case, McFadyen shows he is consistent. I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning finishing this one - not a great idea to be reading this book at 3am. Explicit, disturbing - yes! But also great writing! I will be looking forward to his next books.

Cody McFadyen can write a serial murder story. Not just a genre style book, but really write something that just overwhelms you - sucks you into the vortex. McFadyen can invoke your emotions and immerse you until you no longer care what time it is or even what day it is. You just cannot stop reading and the mantra becomes, "just one more chapter", then I'll stop. But of course, you can't so you don't.

McFadyen has created the character, Smoky Barret, a hard working, FBI agent that has been through more unfortunate circumstances than a person should ever have to endure. But with her collection of friends/co-workers at the FBI in the small but effective, Los Angles serial killer investigation group, you have an endearing group of characters with which to affix your emotional roller coaster to.

This book is longer than most of this genre (at nearly 600 pages), but it is so well written, that you will forget the length, some of the coincidences, and maybe the fact that this story seems "over the top". Although, who really knows what is over the top today. The newspaper articles across the country never cease to amaze me as one story seems to top the next. Who's to say when fiction surpasses reality?

The Face of Death will tug at your inner psychological stability. It will jerk your emotions and when you think you've had enough, McFadyen will show that you have not even come close. This series really has the chance to become something special. The first in the series, Shadow Man, was an excellent debut novel. And there was no sophomore slump with this one. If you like the Lucas Davenport "Prey" series by John Sanford, then you have another series ready and at your disposal.

Yes, you do turn the pages. But there were times I felt unclean. The description of a couple of the killings felt closer to horror, to porn, than thriller. The numerous plot holes are disappointing. The killer turns out to be less than expected, and then unbelievable. Some imagery, the drinking from the dark pool, I've seen before. And the language of the children sounds like King.

you NEED to read the first book in this series before starting The Face of Death. I started this book a few months ago, read a few dozen pages, found it unbearable, and put it aside. The reason was that McFadyen was spending swaths of real estate rehashing past events that I knew nothing about. These are also some of the most female-centric stylized pages and the story gets off to what seems like a 'feel-good'-'I am woman' story that is not at least what I look forwards to reading.

Happily, I was prodded into coming back to this book. Once the story gets cooking, this is a very intricate multi-leveled fact based and expertly plotted mystery. As a work of fiction, as someone who pays attention to how a work is crafted, I found this novel to be one of the most complex cobbled together stories I have ever come across.

McFadyen is a guy, I double checked on that one. The reason I say this is because at times, this is pure romance genre. He's writing this analytical serial killer forensic detective novel in the guise of a more detailed Patricia Cornwell and then at times he takes this female character and tosses her into a bath of romance. This is not what I look for in a mystery thriller. But I guess its done pretty well.

At other times, McFadyen mines the female psyche in a way I have never seen from a male. Maybe Im wrong, I am a guy myself. But this story had such a strong female presence... I guess what Im trying to get at is "wow". McFadyen peppers the story all over with little sentence observations that you would expect to find in only a story told by a woman. Little bits of female wisdom or nuance.

The Face of Death is a very complex story. It has so many components, all with different arcs and mostly done incredibly well. Its slow and overly exact. McFadyen spends a lot of time digging into ideas, whether its a character study, a manner of investigation, a motivation, intricacies of friendship, he really plows this for all its worth. And while at times I found myself wanting the story to get moving again, to get back on track, in the end, I was grateful that McFadyen spent the time to get the story just right.

One thing I really liked was that Smokey Barrett, the leader of an FBI task force and the protagonist, was not the only person doing the solving here. When you read books like this, 99% of the time even if the protagonist is part of the group, they are the ones doing all of the problem solving. Its like the rest of the group is unneeded except for as window dressing. This is not the case here. Its nice to see secondary characters add important thoughts, to be part of a greater whole.

For some reason, few authors in the genre field use the practice of telling a story within a story to their advantage. McFadyen presses this technique to the hilt. Instead of changing point of view (in my mind this is the lazy man's practice of telling a complicated story), McFadyen finds new characters who tell stories, and these stories propel the plot forwards. Its so refreshing to read an author who manages to do this so seamlessly.

I can see why this book gets dinged here and there by some of the reviewers on Amazon. This is a GORE FEST. The story is black and covered up by this candy coated female love. Its like someone spread chocolate frosting over rotting flesh with abandoned glee. Some of the story is pushed beyond plausibility. And lastly, the mish mash of styles... As I said McFadyen gets fixated on a moment, and it drags out. I think he can loose readers like he did with myself the first time around when he focuses on aspects that the reader does not care about. You just have to get beyond this, remember that the story is going to change drastically in a few pages, and you'll be set.

This is one of the very best works I have read in a long time and I cant wait to tackle the other stories in by this author.

This is the second novel to feature FBI agent Smoky Barrett, and I recommend that new readers start with `Shadow Man' as this will provide useful information about Smoky and her team. Cody McFadyen creates a world which is dark, unsettling and full of danger. By moving between outline and detail, he challenges readers either to follow or to make assumptions. Either way, the journey is not comfortable.

Join Smoky and her team as they try to make sense of a triple homicide where the sole survivor, a sixteen year old girl named Sarah, is holding a gun to her own head and asking for Special Agent Barrett by name. This is the beginning of a rollercoaster ride through the labyrinths of psychological abuse and the depths of human depravity. It is not a journey for the squeamish: the violence is graphic but never gratuitous. The novel covers lifetimes of experiences through a five day window in the present as Smoky pursues the killer and a much longer period in the past.

This is the kind of novel that can leave a reader feeling like a voyeur into a world that few of us have any experience of. It can leave you feeling uncomfortable on many levels. While I worked out some elements of the puzzle before the end, this didn't really detract from the experience. So, why don't I give the novel 5 stars? I should but I can't. It has made me feel too uncomfortable. The third novel has just been released and, yes, I'll be reading it as well.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

FBI Special Agent Smoky Barrett is one of those uniquely gifted and probably twisted individuals who have the ability to peer into the turbulent black minds of psychopathic serial killers. On the basis of a minimum of clues, scattered forensic evidence, behaviour patterns and bewilderingly brilliant intuitive foresight, they prepare profiles and stalk the stalkers - the killers that are the very essence of human evil.

A sixteen year old girl, the sole survivor at the blood-drenched scene of a gruesome triple homicide, is holding a gun to her head and seems bent on suicide. She insists she will talk only to Special Agent Barrett and reveals that someone she calls "The Stranger" has killed her entire family and that he has killed everyone she ever loved. No one has ever believed Sarah's tale of the existence of "The Stranger" and even Barrett is finding it a tough story to handle. The evidence slowly but surely mounts and Barrett comes to understand that she is on the trail of a killer who is a living nightmare. But she also realizes that Sarah and The Stranger can also teach her a great deal about her relationships with her own adopted daughter, also traumatized by a close brush with violence!

"The Face of Death" is a long novel and it isn't easy to read. The plot is complex; the procedural trail is twisted and difficult to follow; and the violence is bloody and graphic to a fault. But Cody McFadyen's writing is positively hypnotic. He has personified evil in a fashion that I haven't shivered to since I first read a Hannibal Lecter novel. His descriptions of family love, friendship, loyalty and teamwork are compelling and their juxtaposition with the graphic tales of violence make his story all the more frightening and heart-wrenching. McFadyen has achieved the near impossible feat of writing a blood-soaked thriller that is capable of provoking tears and putting an emotion laden lump into the throat of the most hardened readers.

Five stars for the hypnotic writing and the near impossibility of putting this amazing thriller down. One star off for the rather Byzantine complexity of the plot (which would never have caused me to set the book aside under any circumstances ... his writing is THAT good!). That leaves "The Face of Death" as a highly recommended four star thriller.

Paul Weiss