Collecting Cooper - a review

Now an ex-cop and fresh out of Christchurch Prison after four months on a drinking charge, Tate is dragged into an ongoing investigation. The last killer he chased ended up with Tate’s daughter dead and his wife brain-dead, hence the drinking that got him in the slammer in the first place. Now they want his expertise again. There’s a new serial killer on the loose.

Adrian just finished burning his pseudo-mother to death. She was the head nurse at Grover Hills, the institution he was raised in after he got his own back on those bullies in junior high. When the government ran out of money, the patients were all let out on the street, Adrian wants back in. He tasers criminal psychologist, Dr. Cooper, a college professor, and part-time serial killer, and imprisons him in ‘The Screaming Room’ where Adrian and others where punished all those years ago. He’s added Cooper to his collection of serial killer souvenirs. What’s better that an actual killer himself.

Meanwhile Emma Green has gone missing, the daughter of Tate’s former lawyer, who just happens to be the same girl he hit and injured while drunk. The lawyer feels he is owed one and Tate is set loose to find the young lady. The paths of the ex-cop and the serial killers cross as it comes to light that the missing girl has also been kidnapped and is being presented as a victim for Cooper by Adrian.

Stumbling across clues at ongoing police investigations, Tate is at least given a little bit of a glad-hand by his former partners since he is also helping them track down the elusive Melissa X, New Zealand’s most elusive serial killer, who’s connected to the missing Dr. Cooper.

Cleave leads us on a tantalizing, mouth-watering specter of horror, never knowing what will be revealed around the next corner, or turning of a page. This is one in a series of novels centered on Detective Tate and he withholds just enough to make you want to get that next book now