Invisible

Trial By Fire

James Patterson is a bestselling author and David Ellis is a Chicago attorney—together they have  thought up a serial killer more terrifying than Hannibal ‘The Cannibal’ Lecter.

In their thriller, Invisible, the heroine Emmy Dockery is an FBI analyst, which multiple problems. She is wracked by nightmares because her beloved twin Marta was killed in a freak fire accident.  Her boss Julius ‘The Dick’ Dickinson suspends her because she doesn’t respond to his sexual advances. She still has complicated feelings for her former fiancée Harrison ‘Books’ Bookman, whom she ditched at the alter. He quit the FBI and started a book store. She needs his help to convince her skeptical and nasty boss that Marta was the victim of a wily serial killer, who has murdered over 50 people by setting them on fire, but so cleverly that local cops close these cases of arson as accidental.

 She does use devious means to get Dickinson to agree to a full scale investigation, with Books returning as special investigator to head the team of investigators and analysts—among them the beautiful Sophie, who sends Emmy into a jealous tizzy.

As the investigation proceeds, in which Emmy and Sophie discern a pattern, a special forensics expert also reveals that the killer tortures his victims in the most horrific ways and then set their homes on fire to obliterate evidence. Emmy goes through additional trauma whenever more details come out, because she realizes what her sister must have gone through.

The killer also records his modus operandi, between chapters about the hunt for him, for the reader to get an idea of just how diabolical he is—it has to be assumed that a killer so merciless must be a man.

Superbly written and fast-paced, the book is what is usually described as ‘nail-biting,’ add terrifying, nauseating and ghoulishly fascinating to it. And when the monster’s identity is revealed, it comes as a shock.

Invisible

By James Patterson &

Publisher: Little, Brown & Company

Pages: 432