COLD BLOOD

Title: COLD BLOOD
Author: Theresa Monsour
Pages: 368
Date: 09/04/2007
Grade: 4.5
Details: nr. 2 Paris Murphy Mystery
Own

Justice Tripp has been a troubled person all his life. Being bullied and beaten up in highschool only makes things worse.
Now, under the influence of alcohol and drugs, he loses it completely. He kills a woman he doesn't know in a deliberate hit and run, hides her body, but keeps a finger.
When he joins a search party for the woman and "finds" the finger, he's a hero for a few days.
And he might have gotten away with it, if it hadn't been for Parish Murphy, police detective and former class mate of his. She doesn't believe his story and starts digging, finding ever more disturbing facts, but little evidence.
That evidence she intends to find at the highschool reunion they will both attend. The same reunion where Tripp intends to kill her.

One of the few mysteries I've ever read where the murderer was identified to the reader from the start.
I'm not sure how I feel about that.
On the one hand I like not knowing, and trying to figure out the clues as I read.
On the other hand though, seeing Tripp going to pieces during the course of the story was strangely fascinating.
If nothing else, this book was well written, and the story gripped my from the word go.