Carnage

Fans of thrillers often lament the staleness of the genre, the fact that publishers shower us with the same old stuff season after season-formula stories that you can figure out after the first five pages. But fans won't lament Andrew Billings' new novel, CARNAGE, which is a bizarre and twisted tale that grabs you by the collar and holds on until you're thoroughly unnerved. A respected Seattle businesswoman, Lauren Bowman becomes entangled in the militant animal-rights movement, and participates in a raid on a bio-research laboratory to free rats and monkeys. The raid goes awry, however, and a security guard gets killed. One of Lauren's comrades, a young woman named Megan, disappears during their escape. A few days later, Lauren finds a video in her home, which shows Megan being tortured and killed. Acting on the advice of her father, a crusty ex-con who owns a bar and marina on Seattle's Lake Washington Ship Canal, Lauren engages a cashiered drug-cop named Matt Burgess to help her find out who killed Megan, since she herself can't go to the police without risking prosecution for the death of the security guard. Unlike most stock heroes in mystery thrillers, Burgess is a believable and interesting character, a guy who suffers from clinical depression over his many failures in life. Billings uses him to preach a bit about the insanity of America's war on drugs, but this is a small flaw in a story that builds in complexity and pace to a climax that might leave you numb. You get a strong dose of the dark side of Seattle's drug world, and a taste of a murderous obsession that seems all too real. I can't say more without the plot without giving too much away, so I'll just say, "Try this one; you'll like it." In CARNAGE, Billings delivers what thriller fans crave, just as he did with his previous book, TAINTED BLOOD.