So I have an hour between flights, and I wander out, looking for a magazine shop or whatever to pick up some random bestseller that I'll think is okay, and will forever remind me of the day of too many airports.
Instead, I find a (mini) bookstore. So much better.
And there, I pick up Heart Sick by Chelsea Cain. With a tag line of "Love hurts. Sometimes it's torture." and a positive comparison to Hannibal Lecter on the cover, I just can't help myself.
Archie Sheridan is a cop in Portland, OR who has been on medical leave for the last two years. When 4 girls go missing, and are found dead, he gets called in back to work. He also calls Susan, a reporter at the Portland Herald (guess where Cain works?). Archie wants Susan to follow him around this investigation, and she's all too happy to follow along.
The story goes back and forth between the investigation, bits and pieces of Susan's life, and what happened to Archie as he was held in a basement and tortured by Gretchen Lowell, the serial killer that put him on medical leave. She fed him pills, removed his spleen, and carved up his chest, to just mention a few things.
The story is amazingly well written. Though you're constantly being pulled into different story lines and view points, it really works. You can feel Archie's desperation to keep seeing Gretchen, to keep getting bodies out of her. But you can also see how it's tearing him apart, and how it makes him want to kill himself (quiet literally).
My favorite lines? Anne (the profiler who missed Gretchen, but came back for the kidnapper/murder) : "She's a psychopath." Archie: "Yeah, but she's my psychopath."
I'm a huge fan...but then again, I love serial killer novels. They're so much fun.
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