Review: The Cutting Room

The Cutting Room by Ashley Dyer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Let's see if this book can hold my interest.
Short intro in the 2 mc's then they are lured to the remains of the next victim of a serial killer.
With the setting being in UK, and for once not London, instead Liverpool, this might just be my kind of book.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5. Up-to-date internet social media-use, with facebook, twitter, tumblr, instagram, live-streaming, VPN, email and short-messages (SMS and chat). Very well done, without embellishing or any mistakes I could spot. Also without hacking, sadly, but as that is often wrong or over-the-top, achieving too much, the fact that it is not used makes it more real for me.
In other books the police (or the investigating people) have a go-to-Hacker (often male) who is like a magician, making things happen that (without explanation) are very expensive, very hard to do in a short time frame or simply impossible.

The POV was mainly from three different persons, the female detective (DS Ruth Lake, which for me is the main character), the male detective (DCI Greg Carver) and the Killer. This was one of the things which did not sit too well with me, but the chapters where short, and the story connecting Art, Performances, Streaming, Graffiti, Exhibition, Tattoos and even crowd-manipulation, was well written, and delved into ethics, asking "what is allowed in Art" and "what is Art" without giving a certain answer - you have to think about the book, probably even after you have finished it.
As I am an interested observer who likes Giger, I know some of the images which are in that style described in The Cutting Room - see the linked book Biomechanics.
Page-turner, with short-chapters, so you can try to take a break after finishing another chapter - if you really want to...

The personal problems of Lake & Carver played a certain role in this book, very well integrated into the story, but a bit much, will be interesting to see how this will grow or develop in the next book (there will be a next book, I hope?!). Will try to get the first book in the series cheap, or borrow it, if possible (just checked, it is not that expensive, might buy it after reading something different).

Highly recommended UK Serial Killer case with excellent Internet integration in the story.

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