#BlogTour - Mimic by Daniel Cole (Audiobook)

In life she was his muse . . .

In death she’ll be his masterpiece

1989: DS Benjamin Chambers and DC Adam Winters are on the trail of a serial killer with a twisted passion for recreating the world’s greatest works of art through the bodies of his victims. After Chambers nearly loses his life, the case goes cold due to lack of evidence. The killer lies dormant, his collection unfinished.

1996: DS Marshall has excelled through the ranks of the Metropolitan Police Service, despite being haunted by the case that defined her teenage years. Having obtained new evidence, she joins Chambers and Winters to reopen the case. However, their resurrected investigation brings about a fresh reign of terror, the team treading a fine line between delivering justice and becoming vigilantes in their pursuit of a monster far more dangerous and intelligent than any of them had anticipated…

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MIMIC is a London-set novel about the pursuit of a ‘theme’ serial killer. The discovery of a naked bodybuilder on a plinth in Hyde Park, his body arranged in a recreation of Rodin’s Thinker, sets DS Benjamin Chambers on a mission to track down the killer, once he has convinced his boss that the victim didn’t climb up on to the plinth, naked, on a cold winter’s night, and commit suicide… Along the way Chambers picks up a couple of ‘sidekicks’ in DC Winters and DS Marshall. All three are well-drawn characters with talents and flaws, who complement, and hinder, each other in the progress of the investigation.

Starting in 1989, there are a couple of time jumps, the first of which felt, to me, slightly awkward, Daniel Cole having introduced his characters, only to have to reintroduce them and update the reader on where they have been. It’s a minor point though, and Cole quickly recovers, with Winters in particular injecting some humour to balance the startling nature of the crimes. The key to the book, as with the more successful narratives of this genre (think of, say, the movie ‘Se7en’) is a convincing villain and an absorbing ‘theme’ to the murders. In this case the killer arranges his victims in the manner of great sculptures, taunting the investigators as he does so. 

Half the fun - and it shouldn’t really be fun, should it? - in stories of this type is in the gruesome manner by which the killer sets about creating his ‘scenes’ or, in this case, ‘art.’ The tableaux that the killer creates, replicating great artworks, are horrific, and visceral, and thrilling. Of course, such intricately designed murders require quite a suspension of disbelief from the reader. It is to Cole’s credit that, while reading, you don’t stop and wonder just how the killer could have done what he does without being discovered; where did he get the time? But it is the discovery of the artist’s ‘muse’ which kicks the plot into top gear and, from there, Cole barely gives the reader time to breathe.

The story is well-constructed and, in the audio version, brought to life by the narration by Jude Owusu, who performs the dialogue especially well. He makes the interactions between the three main characters exceptionally convincing. A really entertaining listen.

Thanks to Orion Books @orionbooks, Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers @Tr4cyF3nt0n and, of course, Daniel Cole @danielcolebooks for the opportunity to join the Audiobook Tour.