Soze Says

Sometimes authors seem to release a book they wrote out of some kind of obligation. That is, it feels phoned in, with little to no heart. Slasher: The Escape of Richard Heinz may be Iain Rob Wright's version of that book.

Now, granted, I confirmed half way through what I had begun to suspect: that this was a sequel to at least one of his previous works. I was partly correct. It was actually a sequel to two of his previous works. I would have appreciated a heads up about that, but okay, this is supposed to be able to be read as a stand alone novella. That means it also has to be reviewed as such.

Basically, Slasher is a straight forward thriller pitting two special agents against an insane killer in a creepy setting. It does nothing new or engaging, and indeed is marred by a number of questionable character decisions that never ring true, and eventually involves a protagonist from one of those two previous novels coming in to (largely) sort things out. Which makes the efforts of the special agents seem laughable. In fact, even their reason for being involved in the hunting down of a serial killer seems at best a stretch, given their usual playground is described as dealing with terrorism.

At least Slasher is competently written without any major stylistic flaws that gives the reader pause. And for that reason alone it scores a ...

2 Incompetent Field Agents for Slasher: The Escape of Richard Heinz.