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Searching For Blue Mercury

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So how do you know what really goes on deep inside a person's skull? You pass so near to people each day: on the street, in a hallway, standing near you on the subway, sitting next to you on a plane. How do you know who they really are? If you knew they were having horrible thoughts, maybe ideas about murder, would you just move away? Would you call the police?

In J.M.E. Flowers book, Searching for Blue Mercury, you will meet such a person. He is Detective Parker, nicknamed "Blue Mercury" or just "Merc." His boss who is also his best friend has assigned him to a serial killer case because Parker is a topnotch sleuth -- or, at least he used to be. Merc and his boss had served time together in Afghanistan as marines where they became war buddies inside and out.
Over there, Parker had saved his boss' life by stopping arterial bleeding for endless hours when he could have sprinted to safety.

Lately, however, as much as he favors Parker, his boss notices that Merc seems extremely distraught, possibly heading for a nervous breakdown. He wonders if Parker has seen just too many murder victims -- too much horror, too much bloodletting in his life. Trying to act smooth, Merc Parker has taken a rather nonchalant attitude toward the serial killings, as if one more doesn't seem to matter.

In Searching For Blue Mercury, the reader is constantly permitted to see the rather gruesome thoughts that course through Detective Parker's head. He has a recurring dream, a hallucination really, but he cannot force the entirety of the horrible delusion to surface. It slashes the sanctity of his mind and shreds his sanity.
"Parker wanted to die. He wanted to take his father's gun and blast away at everything. To fire and keep firing till everything was dead. Just as he should have done that day ... He lay there knotted up in a fetal position on the floor and waited for this one to pass."

Parker knows there is a history of psychosis in his genetic makeup. Afraid his daughter will succumb to mental illness, he has the girl confined to a hospital under the care of a well-known but egotistical psychiatrist. The story is very clear about this point: Merc Parker loves his daughter. He adores her and wants her to remain healthy.

He would do anything, anything to save her from the terrors of mental illness he knows his own mother battled and which now trouble him. Although it is hard to imagine any father hospitalizing his offspring to prevent an illness, still, in Searching for Blue Mercury, it seems perfectly reasonable, since the reader is privy to the increasingly disorganized, terrifying thoughts of Detective Parker.

In spite of what police think is disinterest, Merc Parker is deeply engrossed in the serial killings. He obsesses about each one. At times, especially when alone, demons bound into his imagination. He feels the victims being slashed with a knife as if he was their killer. He sees their blood--feels its warmth. He stares into the eyes of a man looking down at him, strangled. He is doused with gasoline and burned. He pictures a body stuffed in a trunk, gasping for air, dying from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Feeling doomed, Merc knows he must get to the bottom of his delusional ranting before complete insanity engulfs him. With his wife, he visits the center where his daughter remains hospitalized. Her psychiatrist wants a conference. During the meeting, Parker cannot concentrate on reality. He attempts to strike out at the psychiatrist but is physically restrained by a muscular attendant whom Parker claims is "on steroids."

As more murders occur, Parker's boss is forced to remove him from the case. Evidence begins to surface which indirectly points to Merc as a suspect. His boss refuses to believe any proof. But as he and other detectives examine the facts and the sometimes psychotic behavior of Parker, Merc indeed seems to be the killer.

More direct, damaging evidence is uncovered. Parker has secretly taken confidential files out of the police bureau and arranged them so any connection between one killing and another is deliberately removed.

As Searching for Blue Mercury moves rapidly on, Parker comes closer and closer to a complete break with the outside world. But can he still mobilize his painful thoughts enough to unravel the pieces of his own broken psyche, the numerous serial killings, his own hellish life, before he is caught by police or mowed down by them in a final life-ending confrontation? Will the story make sense before it ends, or will the reader be left to ponder if Blue Mercury's search for himself ends in a straightjacket?

As a reviewer, I loved this story. The book is extremely well written. Its descriptions of the inner workings of a very troubled mind will leave any reader thankful for their own mental stability, possibly even doubting it at times. The ending and epilogue are such a shocker that I read parts of them twice to make sure they flowed logically from earlier premises. They did! When I looked back at some of the facts presented, it was my own interpretation of that data which set me up wrongly for the unexpected ending.

I would recommend Searching for Blue Mercury to any reader who loves mysteries, especially those dealing with the human mind. In many ways, it fits the horror genre better than mystery. As a result, it is not a story for the squeamish because it describes scenes some might find too graphic. All in all, it is one of the best tales I've read in a long, long time.
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This is an amazing book! The author just drops you into the story, so you don't have to wait for the action to start. This is a tale of how dangerous the human mind can be, and what can happen if you try to hard to suppress horrors from the past. There are a few twists that you don't see coming; the author really pulls you along for the ride, and she's good at it! It is gory and disturbing in places, but, it just adds to the believability and authenticity of the book. Happy Reading!

Are you looking for something dark and different to add to your summer reading list? If so, you might want to check out "Searching for Blue Mercury."
The hero (anti-hero?) of this crime thriller is Monty Parker, but the ladies like to call him Blue Mercury in appreciation of his indigo eyes. Swoon. Monty aka Blue Mercury is the lead detective on a serial murder case with a mounting victim count. To say that Monty is a troubled soul is the understatement of the century - witness this description: "For just how long he couldn't remember, but Monty Parker needed murder. He immersed himself in it, imbibed its many humors, the same as he did with women, seeking out death and pain and all the illusions of substance and meaning they gave to his life." Are you getting the picture - dude has a lot of baggage!

The novel intertwines Monty's growing descent into madness with his attempts to capture the murderer. The dilemma? The bodies that are piling up all have connections to Blue Mercury himself.

The author , J.M.E. Flowers, has created a taut suspenseful story. The book works best when we are given peeks into Monty's disturbing past and his attempts to keep it together and protect those he loves. The reader feels a genuine connection to Monty and wants to see him not only solve the case, but come out from under the weight of his demons. The twists and turns in the book are generally surprising and keep the reader turning pages. Somewhat less successful are some of the depictions of the secondary characters. Their motivations are sometimes difficult to understand or don't make sense.

There is a possibility that the novel may be turned into a screenplay in the future and it's fun to speculate who might ultimately play Blue Mercury. Brad Pitt? Bradley Cooper? Russell Crowe? All the elements of an interesting psychological thriller are there so I wouldn't be surprised if "Searching for Blue Mercury" doesn't end up on the big screen at some point. Before it does, consider picking up the novel. It's an interesting ride to the dark side.

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