Book Review: Shifting Skin

Reviewed By: Catherine Thompson - RAM

Shifting Skin     Amazon US TPB Amazon US HC Amazon UK PB Amazon UK HC Amazon Canada TPB Amazon Canada HC
Chris Simms
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Police Procedural   Serial Killer
Series: Detective Inspector Jon Spicer # 2
Orion, $24.95 trade paperback, 293 pages

The newspapers call him the Butcher of Belle Vue. He’s killed three times now. The victims are all women, and each one has had portions of her skin removed. The latest victim has had the most skin removed, plus her entire face and several teeth. Each victim has been dumped on a piece of waste ground by Manchester’s greyhound-racing track, an area known as Belle Vue.

Detective Inspector Jon Spicer has been saddled with a new partner, DI Rick Saville, and the Butcher case. When a woman comes forward, claiming to have heard the Butcher’s third victim being killed in the room next to hers in a seedy hotel in the area, Spicer hopes it’s the breakthrough he’s been waiting for. But all Fiona Wilson has to back up her story is a business card she retrieved from the room the next morning. The card is from one of the city’s many escort services, and the name “Alexia” has been scrawled on the back. Spicer isn’t sure it’s relevant, but he and Saville follow the meagre clues, which take them into the underbelly of Manchester and bring them face-to-face with the violence that lurks in every man.

Shifting Skin initially put me off, because as I’ve said on many occasions, I dislike the whole “serial-killer” Macguffin that so many writers employ these days. Luckily, Chris Simms’s characters save the day. Jon Spicer is a relief from those sensitive cops found in much of today’s crime fiction. He’s not completely comfortable with his own violent tendencies, but he’s not utterly at odds with them, either. Shifting Skin is not for the faint of heart, but neither is it too graphic.

Catherine Thompson - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Catherine Thompson - RAM