The Beautiful Dead by Belinda Bauer

The Beautiful Dead by Belinda Bauer
Buy The Beautiful Dead by Belinda Bauer at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Thrillers
Reviewer: Sophie Diamond
Summary: Dark and artful, an interesting look into an obsessive relationship between a killer and his muse.
Buy? Maybe	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 352	Date: November 2016
Publisher: Bantam Press
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 978-0593075517
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Eve Singer is a journalist stuck on the ‘meat beat’; she and her camera man Joe chase down every recent murder to get a shot of the gory body, determined to get the best viewings and move into reporting better stories. Eve soon learns to become careful what she wishes for when she begins to get her exclusives from the killer himself, a self-gratifying exhibitionist who is wooing her with a succession of gruesome murders. But how long will it be until he gets what he finally wants; to murder Eve? 

This is an immensely readable story;it’s fast paced, exciting and has a good plot. The killer has a good motive and his psychopathy is wrapped up in the beauty of death and not the love of gore. It means that the murders, while horrible, aren’t gratuitously violent or gory. The killer was the most interesting character in this story. He’s so ordinary to observe and yet absolutely insane, and other than targeting Eve, he kills randomly.

The killer’s random targets and seemingly insatiable bloodlust, should make this story terrifying. After all, what’s scarier than being murdered for no reason at all? But it doesn’t. I scare very easily and this story did not scare me. I think this was because of the other main character, Eve. While I felt sorry for Eve in parts, I did not like her. She just didn’t do it for me as a main character, I felt that when interacting with the killer she lacked authenticity and when you saw other glimpses of her with her dad or cameraman, the story shifted from thriller to chick lit.

The stabs of humour Eve interjects are either terribly misplaced, or make a dark story more palatable and less haunting. I’m still not one hundred percent decided, but I’m leaning more towards them being misplaced. If you are going to write a story about a deranged killer, I think it should be scary. It should feel like they’re leaning over your shoulder and you’re next but this book didn’t feel like that at all. I wasn’t haunted, so I slept easier, but equally it did not make a large impression on me.

The Beautiful Dead reminded me of Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon; there were a lot of similarities but while Harris’s story gave me many sleepless nights, Bauer’s story I could read with ease. I did like this book and I would happily recommend it to a friend; it just lacked the tension needed to make a good book like this spectacular.

Thank you to the publishers, author and the Bookbag for my review copy. For more from this author check out Finders Keepers. And if you like the sound of this story, then you must read The Silence Of The Lambs by Thomas Harris.

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You can read more book reviews or buy The Beautiful Dead by Belinda Bauer at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy The Beautiful Dead by Belinda Bauer at Amazon.com.

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