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Pan Macmillan 2008
Reviewed by Helen Lloyd
Australian FBI profiler Sophie Anderson, on her last day at FBI
headquarters at Quantico before transferring to the Los Angeles field
office, is given the task of showing crime author Loretta Black around the
facilities. She finds Black to be rude and overbearing, and is glad when
the tour is over.
Within days of Sophie's arrival in Los Angeles, Black is found murdered in
bizarre circumstances. She has been killed in exactly the same way as the
victim in her latest book. It doesn't take long for Sophie to link this
crime with the murder of another crime author several months earlier in
San Francisco. She too had been killed in the same manner as one of her
fictional victims.
When another author disappears in circumstances similar to her most recent
plot, Sophie is involved in a desperate race against time to catch the
killer before he can kill again.
FAN MAIL is the third book featuring psychic FBI profiler Sophie Anderson.
I have to admit that I don't normally like woo-woo in crime fiction, and
Sophie's psychic ability made me initially wary of this series. However,
thankfully author P.D. Martin has resisted the temptation of having Sophie
have a convenient vision and voila! - crime solved. Actually there was one
such moment, relating to a side plot, but I didn't mind that instance as
I'd already figured it out for myself some time before without any psychic
intervention!
Rather Sophie's visions help provide her with a more complete picture of
the victim and the crime scene, and she combines this with the more usual
profiler techniques to build a better picture, more quickly, of the
perpetrator. She chose to transfer to a field office so she could hone her
psychic abilities by being able to attend crime scenes when the details
are likely to be fresher and her visions stronger.
Alongside the main plot, the finalisation of the investigation from the
previous book, THE MURDERERS' CLUB continues. I would recommend reading
the earlier book before starting FAN MAIL as it contains significant
spoilers. As we follow the course of the investigations, a lot of detail
about investigative and forensic procedures is included and, while mostly
interesting, it sometimes gets a bit tedious and has a tendency to slow
down the story.
It takes a brave crime author to write a story about a serial killer
murdering crime authors! But luckily Martin had no such qualms because FAN
MAIL is good, fast paced thriller with an interesting and unique character
in Sophie.
Feb 2009 review originally posted on Murder and Mayhem
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