2010; 302 pages. Full Title: The
Scavenger’s Daughter – A Tyler West Mystery. New Author? : Yes. Genres : Serial Killer Thriller; Psychological
Thriller; Hard-Boiled Mystery. Overall
Rating : 7½*/10.
It was a black-tie affair, and San Diego’s
finest citizens have turned out in force for the fun, free food, and photo opportunities. The occasion is the grand opening of the
city’s Museum of Medieval History and its debut exhibit “Torture
Instruments of the Dark Ages”.
Even the mayor of San Diego,
James Stanton, has shown up for the gala event.
Alas, he’s partaken liberally of the free alcoholic beverages being
served, and has ended up getting caught in the arms of a woman who’s not his
wife. Even worse, it isn’t really a
flesh-and-blood woman; it was something called an Iron Maiden, a
medieval torture device which is one of the many displays at the museum.
Somehow, Mayor Stanton
triggered the hinged-door, got trapped inside, and died from multiple stab
wounds courtesy of the Iron Maiden’s internal iron spikes and knives. A tragic accident, but such things can happen
when one goes wandering around, rip-snorting drunk.
But local reporter Tyler West is
not so sure it was an accident. The
museum’s director. Merrill Addison, assured him that the Iron Maiden’s killing
mechanism had been disengaged prior to letting any of the guests into the
building. Safety First, and all that. So perhaps this was murder most foul.
Just so long as it isn’t the
start of some mass murderer’s career.
Because everyone knows that serial killers are bad for business and
tourism, two things that San Diego depends on.
What’s To Like...
First things first: if you’re looking for
something along the lines of Fifty Shades of Grey, The Scavenger’s Daughter is not your answer. There’s nothing erotic about sawing off the
top of a cranium, puncturing someone’s vertebrae while simultaneously crushing
their trachea, or squishing somebody’s head until it implodes (as shown in the
book cover above). The Inquisitors
were trying to extract a confession, not get their jollies off.
Instead, the book is a
well-researched essay on a wide variety of torture devices used back in the
Middle Ages, especially during the Inquisition. The book’s title is a
corruption of one name of one of these; it was originally called “Skevington’s Daughter”, named for the
nobleman who invented it, and was used to compress the victim into the shape of
a medicine ball, resulting first in cramps, then hemorrhaging, then death. Surprisingly, there’s not a lot a gore in the
story; Mike McIntyre presents the victim’s dread leading up to the torture and
the finding of the body afterward, but not the actual killing. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t call The
Scavenger’s Daughter a cozy mystery.
The book is written in the
storytelling style: “so-and-so said this, then this happened, then the hero
did this”. There’s an astonishing
small amount of cussing in the text; I counted just six instances in the first
third of the book. The story starts a
bit slow, mostly because Mike McIntyre is setting the scene and giving Tyler
West’s backstory. Once that’s done, the
pace picks up admirably, with lots of thrills-&-spills and an ever-growing
body count. The 120 chapters cover 302
pages, so you’re never far from a good place to stop. The tale is told in both first-person and
third-person POV’s – the former used whenever we’re tagging along with Tyler;
the latter used whenever we’re following anyone else.
The Scavenger’s Daughter
is set in San Diego, where the author lives, so there’s a nice “feel” to the various
places Tyler visits. I liked the nod to
the late great Border’s Books and chuckled at the brief comment about
Sedona, Arizona, in my home state, being the “touchy-feely
capital of the Southwest”. The
San Diego library system gets some nice ink, I presume the sites cited are all
real branches of it. And I’ve never
heard of the “green flash” that sometimes occurs on the San Diego
shore, but I presume it is a real phenomenon.
The ending is suitably
exciting. There aren’t really any plot
twists, but the action more than compensates for that. All the plot threads all get tied up, so you’re
not forced to read a “Part Two” to finish the tale. The Scavenger’s Daughter is a
standalone novel, and I don’t see that Mike McIntyre ever developed this into a
series.
Ratings…
Amazon:
4.4/5
based on 135 ratings.
Goodreads: 3.78/5 based on 374
ratings and 42 reviews
Excerpts...
I questioned the
stunned guests while Mel took photos of the mayor in the cruel embrace of the
Iron Maiden. I urged her to also shoot
some pictures from more discreet angles.
“Remember the Wheaties test,” I said.
The Wheaties test is the standard editors
use to pick photos. If a picture is
likely to make Mom, Dad or Little Johnny blow their Wheaties at the breakfast
table, it doesn’t run. (loc. 357)
He returned to the paint department, known
in the HomeMart vernacular as the paint pod. His entire job consisted of mixing paint,
eight hours a day, five days a week. He
didn’t actually mix the paint. A
computerized machine did. He merely
entered a color code on a keypad, and the tints were automatically
dispensed. It was so easy, a monkey could
do it. No, he thought, if a
monkey could do it, HomeMart would make smaller aprons. (loc. 2883)
Kindle Details…
The
Scavenger’s Daughter sells for $2.99 at Amazon. Mike McIntyre has another five e-books for
you, priced at either $3.99 or $4.99, but they are
all non-fiction travelogues. ANAICT, the
author has not written any more fiction books.
“Don’t go all
contrite on me now (…) I liked you better as a careless cad.” (loc. 824)
The writing is good, the
storytelling is good, the character development is good, so there’s really only
one thing to quibble about in The Scavenger’s
Daughter: the mystery-solving.
Simply put, the clues that
enable Tyler to figure out whodunit, where his torture chamber is located, how
to rescue a damsel-in-distress, and why the police are barking up the wrong
tree are of the “oh come on now” ilk.
A couple spoiler-free examples:
the freshly-dug grave that the
police somehow overlook,
the obscure “fingers” clue hastily
thought up by one of the victims and later deciphered by Tyler, leading to a
breakthrough in the case,
the cold engine (how did he
anticipate the need for this?), and
the twin vans with identical
license plates (wouldn’t it be better to different plates on them?).
That’s about all there is to
grouse about. If you can put your sleuthing
brain cells on freeze while reading this story, you’ll find this to be an
entertaining and educational read. You
might even learn a thing or three about the horrors that thousands of people
underwent during the Inquisition after being accused of being heretics,
witches, gypsies, or other miscreants.
7½ Stars. FWIW, my favorite character in the story was “the Billboard Bandit”. If Mike McIntyre ever does pen a sequel to The Scavenger’s Daughter, I certainly hope this guy gets developed into a recurring figure.
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