I Am Death

Author/Guide: Chris Carter

Why a Booktrail?

2000s: Just how evil can one human monster be?

ISBN: 978-1471132254
Genre: Crime

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What you need to know before your trail

Seven days after being abducted, the body of a twenty-year-old woman is found on a green patch of grass by the Los Angeles International Airport. She has been left with her limbs stretched out and spread apart, placing her in a five-point human star.

The autopsy reveals that she had been tortured and murdered in a most bizarre way. But the surprises don’t end there. This killer likes to play, and he left a note lodged inside his victim’s throat owning up to the crime with a calling card. The words “I am Death” scrawled across it.

Detective Robert Hunter, who leads LAPD’s Special Section, Ultra Violent Unit, is assigned the case. But almost immediately a second body turns up. Hunter knows he has to be quick. It soon becomes clear that he is chasing a monster. A monster who doesn’t just live in the shadows, but who seems to have the dark shadows live in him. And he is committing these crimes with one very specific goal in mind.

Locations

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Travel Guide

Los Angeles

This is the deepest darkest underbelly of Los Angeles. Definitely not the city of angels, more the city of devils and monsters. Even the glittering Hollywood Hills can’t be immune from the bad shadows as proves to be the case here. Allenwood Road is the scene of the first crime and it just escalates from there. This is a city on the edge, a part of the city like a enclosed community who doesn’t talk to each other. That’s probably because the street signs are either absent or the streets so twisting and turning that even the locals get a bit mixed up.

The police here are hard pushed to find a link to why the women are being taken and who could be taking them and taunting them with messages. Inside the house of the man who is keeping and tortuing them, the darkest recesses of the human mind come to the fore. Be warned, this is not for the faint hearted.

Streetview Maps

B) LA - Allenwood Road

C) LA - Pershing Road

Booktrailer Review

Susan: @thebooktrailer

I’m not going to lie – this book made me feel a bit queasy. Very queasy in fact. The detail in the torture scenes are very graphic and the motive of the killer leads to a whole new raft of sensations. The writing was smooth and efficient in causing maximum impact. The cliff hangers were suitably on the edge of your seat ones and I was left feeling a little nauseous in more than one section of the book.

Having said that, and after drinking some ginger tea to keep my sick feeling to myself, this was a blindingly good and emotional thriller. On a par with Hannibal Lector for me. Are there really people this twisted? The author has worked with them in his previous jobs in the police and you can tell that this is a man who has done meticulous research and imbued the emotional side of hunting down serial killers too.

My heart is stil beating. This was a tough read for me but brilliantly done.