The Cleaner
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Surprising and compelling this powerfully written novel is a terrifyingly vivid rendering inside the mind of a serial killer.
Meet Joe. He’s a nice guy out to catch a copycat killer. The one copying himself. Joe is in control of everything in his simple life, including both his day job at the police department and his 'night work'. He remembers to feed his fish twice a day and visit his mother at least once a week, although he occasionally peppers her coffee with rat poison. He is not bothered by the reports of The Christchurch Carver, who - they say - murdered seven women. Joe knows the carver has killed only six. He knows that for a fact. And Joe is going to find that copy-cat killer, punish him for the one murder and then frame him for the rest.
It's a perfect plan because he already knows he can outwit the police. All he has to do now is take care of all the women who keep getting in his way – his domineering mother for one. Then there is Sally, the maintenance worker who sees him as a replacement for her dead brother, and the mysterious Melissa, the only woman to have ever understood him, but whose fantasies of blackmail and torture no longer have any place in Joe's investigation…
The Carver Series:
Book 1: The Cleaner
Book 2: Joe Victim
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A generic serial killer and an overly drawn out plot mar Cleave's otherwise promising debut, first published outside the U.S. in 2006. Posing as mentally challenged, Joe Middleton is all but invisible to the Christchurch, New Zealand, police detectives whose offices he cleans. The police have no clue that "Slow Joe" is "the Christchurch Carver," a serial killer whose trail of raped and murdered women they are struggling to follow. Of course, this guise ideally suits Joe, who monitors the investigation and makes his next move accordingly. One night, Joe runs afoul of a woman he picks up at a nightclub, who expertly turns the tables and inflicts an injury on Joe that will disturb male readers. Cleave (The Laughterhouse) underscores the banality of evil through his killer, but doesn't sufficiently develop the man's character. Fans of Cleave's later, more polished crime thrillers should be prepared for what is in effect an apprentice work.
