Skin Deep (Detective Marcy Kendrick #1)
Author: Theo Baxter
3.5 out of 5 stars
When Marcy was 10 years old, she and her brother witnessed their mother’s murder. 26 years later, Marcy is now a detective with the LAPD. Unfortunately, she’s gained a reputation as a trigger-happy vigilante due to her willingness to take the kill shot when suspects resist arrest. She’s shot and killed three suspects in the past year. After coming back from her latest suspension, she lands a murder case that has eerie echoes of the man who killed her mother. He was a serial killer called the Face Flayer, who strangled his victims then cut the skin off their face. The case becomes even more personal when the killer contacts her. Will Marcy be able to find the killer before he attacks someone she cares about?
The plot was interesting, and the ending surprised me. In general, the writing was good except for some small issues. At times, the author included unnecessary detail which would mess with the flow of the story. At other times, the author explained things that didn’t need it. For example, Marcy is rushing to a crime scene when she takes a turn too fast and has to slow down. She thinks that she “can’t afford an accident, not just because of the expense, but because she had a crime scene to get to,” which is incredibly obvious and unneeded statement.
I wasn’t sure about Marcy at first. She is very committed to her job, but she doesn’t seem to understand why people have a problem with her shooting and killing three suspects within a year. She does say at one point that she goes for the kill shot because she doesn’t want them to get away, but also says she would prefer them to go to jail. We don’t get any information about two of those shootings, so we don’t know if she could have just wounded them. The one we do have information on, it makes complete sense why she shot to kill.
Marcy did grow on me though. She has a good relationship with her brother and her work partner. And she is able to be professional with her ex-husband, who is now above her in the chain of command. She has a lot of sympathy for the victims and wants to get justice for them. I will say though that by the end of the book, there was little investigating going on. She had hit a wall when looking for suspects but didn’t seem to be trying to think of any way forward. Instead, it felt like she had lost control of the investigation, and she was stuck reacting to what the killer was doing and to his emails.
Overall, I did like this book and would be willing to read more to see if the problems I mentioned persist. But due to those problems, I decided to rate this book 3.5 out of 5 stars. The deaths and body mutilation were disturbing, but the descriptions were kept fairly vague and weren’t gory.
Price through Amazon Kindle: $2.99
Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CWS1JF2J
(I do not benefit from the use of this link.)