Final Cut

I picked up Lin Anderson's Final Cut (Hodder (UK), 2009) on my trip to Canada last month.  It's the sixth book in a series focusing on Dr. Rhona MacLeod, a forensic scientist in Glasgow.  I found it only mildly enjoyable and suspect that this is one of those cases where having read all the previous books in the series would really have helped.  It wasn't a bad book, but it's on the cooler and the less emotionally punchy side as serial killer novels go, much like Mari Jungstedt's novels.  But Jungstedt's novels are about as cool as I can go in the serial killer genre, and there I came in at the beginning of the series and have engaged sufficiently with the characters to compensate for the reserved style.  I don't have that advantage with Rhona MacLeod and her fellow investigators, and the book is all-too-clearly part of a continuing series, with a lot of ongoing subplots from previous books in the background.  There was no problem with understanding what was going on with those loose threads; Anderson is thorough about providing the relevant details.  It was just hard for me to care.  Regular switches in focus character didn't help -- MacLeod was part of an ensemble cast, and not an overly large part.  I realize that forensic scientists are not generally on the front lines of cases, but if that's the lead character's job then I expect a whole lot more forensics.

Merging the hunt for a child killer and a murder mystery involving a Russian mob infiltrating Glasgow made for awkward plotting, and the connection between them was a little too coincidental.  I'm also not fond of any non-F&SF plot that leans on anything psychic.

All this wouldn't have mattered particularly if Anderson had managed to punch my emotional buttons by getting into the victims' heads and providing some intensity of terror, or given me a clever serial killer carefully eluding law enforcement, or even provided enough really creative forensic details for me to be fascinated by the science.  But she didn't.  I suspect her depiction of an investigation is terribly realistic, but that doesn't necessarily make for compelling fiction and certainly doesn't provide what I read serial killer novels for.  I was never scared reading Final Cut, and briefly grossing me out doesn't really substitute for maintaining a properly horrifying ambiance.

All this doesn't make it a bad book.  I was never exasperated or irritated by the writing.  It just didn't grab me much.  The problem in a nutshell: if I can put a serial killer novel down and come back to it later, it's not engaging enough.

I can give this one a only a very mild recommendation if you're not already a series fan, but people who like their serial killer stories on the cooler side and can put up with the leftover threads from previous books will probably enjoy it well enough as beach reading.

Anderson's website is here.  Shopping link: