There’s nothing wrong with a good serial killer murder mystery. There are many, many things wrong with a less-than-good serial killer murder mystery. Unfortunately, A Dream of Death is the latter. I actually got it from the library (website, that is) because it takes place in Canada, and I was curious to see how things were handled up there (aside from sticking the letter “u” in words like colo(u)r and odo(u)r).
So, anyway, someone is killing women in Ontario. They’re all home alone at night, but they don’t live alone. The killer wants someone to find the victim, so he’s only killing women who live with someone who works at night. Our hero is Lincoln Munroe, a mixed-race veteran detective with a happy family (of course). His partner is a beautiful, young, brilliant (did I mention beautiful) woman (also of course). He respects her, and does not see her as a sexual object in any way. Until he does. When’s that? When her boyfriend works the night shift (of course).
Anyway, his inability to figure out the crime is a problem for Lincoln. He’s pulling away from his family (even before he boinks his partner), and he’s been having bad dreams. Very real dreams where he sees a knife hanging from a tree, feels intense pain, and finds a body. Are they dreams, or flashbacks? And if they’re flashbacks, what are they all about? And when a skeleton is found in the woods in pretty much the same place Lincoln’s dreaming about, what’s up with that?
This being a murder mystery, of course it all gets solved, but in the most trite way possible. There may have been twists, but they were all so obvious that they really can’t be considered twists. Not that anyone out there is planning on reading this, but if you run across it, head for an old Agatha Christie instead.
Cannonball Read V 