Perfection

Satterthwait cooks up a fleshy thriller with a great detective team, whom you'll want to see in future books, and a rich plot. You'll gobble up this (hopefully low fat) book, hungry for more, and will be so intent on figuring out "who done it" (and if Sophia and her partner will achieve their own romantic perfection),that you'll forget to reach for your M & M's while reading it. Add to all this, Satterthwait's social commentary on our obsession with weight, and his usual elegant writing style, and you'll agree that this is one binge of a book.

I've read a bunch of Satterthwait's books -- he's one of those authors you discover and then keep seeking out. His writing is always sly, witty, and solidly suspenseful. "Perfection" is no different. The sociological/psychological implications of this premise about a serial killer who slices up fat girls and trims them to fit his obscene ideal are disturbing but riveting. You won't be able to put "Perfection" down -- and if you're on a diet, you'll want to read it with your back to a wall.

Veteran cops who thought they had seen everything want to puke; some do. The killer removed the fat from the obese woman as St. Anselm, Florida detective Sophia Tregaskis thinks the murder reminds her of a flensing operation performed by whalers on whales. Her partner former NYPD detective James Fallon takes charge of the crime scene. The clues are few if any. Two more identical deaths of obese females follow, making it obvious that a serial killer targets overweight women. To aid the cops, psychologist Dr. Eva Swanson begins profiling the killer. As they dig for clues, James admires his partner for holding up and providing insight into the case, as the culprit is quite clever. As the city panics, the Mayor and police chief, encouraged by the demands of the media to catch the killer or resign, pressure the two lead sleuths. Sophia has learned so much from her veteran partner, the consummate professional not allowing anything to intrude on uncovering the identity of the killer except his desire for his much younger partner, but his top priority remains stopping the ritual-like murders before another victim surfaces. In this day and age in which serial killers are common in police procedural novels few match up to the centerfold Lector or the real things, but the "sophisticated" culprit of PERFECTIONS he comes reasonably close especially as he dines and wines on quality food and drink,. Readers and Sophia appreciate James professional and methodical sleuthing for instance lecturing a cop who carelessly parked his car on a crime scene lawn. Though the climatic final twist is somewhere in the realm of Rod Serling plausibility, fans, except overweight females, will enjoy this solid suspense thriller. Harriet Klausner

I honestly have a hard time understanding that anonymous reviewer from P.W. He opines that the characters are cliches, and then reveals details about them which suggest that they are not. As for the ending of the book, my own personal, and of course humble, opinion is that the ending has been very carefully prepared for, very carefully set up. The ending to a mystery novel should be, I believe, like the punch line to a joke -- both inevitable and surprising. And I think that the ending to PERFECTION is both those things. But then again, what do I know?