Author: Rick R. Reed
Publisher: DSP Publications
Pages/Word Count: 280 Pages
At a Glance: IM is action packed, horrifying in its detail, and full of the most delicious twists and turns that will make your skin crawl and your heart race.
Reviewed By: Sammy
Blurb: The Internet is the new meat market for gay men. Now a killer is turning the meat market into a meat wagon.
One by one, he’s killing them. Lurking in the digital underworld of Men4HookUpNow.com, he lures, seduces, and charms, reaching out through instant messages to the unwary. When the first body surfaces, openly gay Chicago Police Department detective Ed Comparetto is called in to investigate. At the scene, the young man who discovered the body tells him the story of how he found his friend. But did this witness play a bigger role in the murder than he’s letting on?
For Comparetto, this encounter is the beginning of a nightmare—because this witness did more than just show up at the scene of the crime; he set the scene.
Comparetto is on a journey to discover the truth—before he loses his career, his boyfriend, his sanity… his life. Because in this killer’s world, IM doesn’t stand for instant message… it stands for instant murder.
Review: IM is a creepy story, there is no doubt about that. The horror of the murders, coupled with the driven, near panicked state of the unrightfully maligned and swiftly made ex-police officer, Ed Comparetto, was perhaps one of the most riveting storylines I have read in a long time. And then there was the serial killer, the cold-blooded monster who brutally destroyed one lonely man after another while pretending to be their answer to cyber dating. All in all, Rick R. Reed’s IM was a gruesome, compelling, and terrifying murder mystery, with copious twists and turns that made for a truly exciting and nail biting, roller coaster of a read.
When Detective Ed Comparetto catches the call to a bloodcurdling murder crime scene, little does he know the witness who found the body would turn out to be a potential suspect. The elfin young man gave detail after detail about finding his friend lying in his own blood, dismembered, in his bathtub. Ed dutifully questioned the witness and filed the man’s sworn affidavit. Only problem was the witness, Timothy Bright, wasn’t exactly who he said he was. Now Ed, who had recently come out to his police force as gay, had to not only find this “witness” but he had to do so on his own, without his badge or gun, after having been fired for allegedly falsifying the same witness statement.
Along the way, Ed will question his own sanity, and stumble upon a man who just may be the answer to his own unending loneliness. But, catching a serial killer as hideous and blindingly intelligent as this one is no easy task. As Ed uncovers secret after secret surrounding the murderer, the horror that is this killer comes to life, and no one is safe.
Why was this novel so very, very good? It is because you alternately hated the serial killer—were sickened and horrified by him, and then mourned for him—then empathized with him for his innocence lost, his life so twisted and strange, his rape at the hands of a man who was sworn to heal those in need. You wanted to hate this man but you saw the reasons for his anger, his insanity, and suddenly, you pitied the very man who viciously destroyed without compunction.
Rick R. Reed takes us deep into the rabbit hole, where so very little makes sense until a dedicated and determined police detective cracks wide open the identity of a killer who somehow managed to escape capture, one murder after another. He does so by sheer grit, and with a new-found love at his side, he pursues the killer relentlessly, even at the cost of his own sanity and, perhaps, his own life.
IM is action packed, horrifying in its detail, and full of the most delicious twists and turns that will make your skin crawl and your heart race. This one is a nail biter from beginning to end, and well worth every moment you will spend reading it.
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