All I could think of after reading this book was that it was hours wasted that I will never get back.

The premise is familiar (serial killer and the spunky heroine/heroic cops) but handled fairly well. The author had some interesting things to say about the links between sexual abuse of children and sexual/emotional/mental dysfunction in adults. The characters were well-drawn and the author was very good at keeping the "who's the killer" clues evenly spread among all the suspects.

So why 1 star? Simply put, the author could have done all of the things she did without including the pornographic scenes of incest and abuse. There was no need for graphic descriptions other than to give a particular type of reader a cheap thrill and the ability to then say, "But I read it because there's a moral--abuse is bad."

This would have been a much better book without the porn. ( )