Perfect Prey (D.I. Callanach, #2)

by Helen Sarah Fields

PART ONE

I don’t often write reviews, that’s what I I figure kindle notes is perfect for, feel something right in the moment and post it, otherwise you’ll forget it come the end. I might take it a wee little too far at time, Just utilize that delete button, I won’t be offended, well, perhaps, just a little, but it’s not like I know where you live… I call my rather unique mental scaffolding ‘the spidey web’, it, along with a Olympic sized swimming pool full of ‘little red fishies’ (red herrings) & of course myself, spend the entirety of any book being read battling over a plethora of plot twists, guesstimating, `maybes & hopefully semi hilarious puns & diatribe, although, be _warned before you read, that jas sometimes I even scare myself ;). So without further ado…

Chapter One

Before I read anything beyond the book blurb .. seems to me that the victims are people who would come into the lives of the young, the needy, the defenseless and who may of used that in bad bad ways…

volcano Arthur’s Seat

DNA

Not going to highlight the whole sentence and ruin it for someone else, but… but…. HEH

a concept beyond irony

This is why I LOVE Scottish & UK humor, off white, grey, black, dark as the night is, well, DARK! Add in irony, sarcasm, dark humor & anything else I can snigger at, snd it’s just bloody marvelous! Big thumbs up from me.

‘This was dreamed up, practised and perfected.’

Wondering if where the cut was done was to emulate pregnancy?

The pathologist, covered head to foot in a white suit,

Which Ava should of had on too.

not wealthy enough for any of the

Isn’t that a little presumptive? Could be any number of reasons someone may have one regardless (I do try to not show too much highlights to keep others not cursing my name when they read my highlights, so read, hopefully without fearing any spoilers)

‘Yeah, you know that stuff in films where they can suddenly zoom in and it all goes super-sharp and you can see inside people’s pockets and read what’s written on a note? That’s all bollocks,’ the editor said. ‘There’s one picture, it consists of a certain number of dots. You can see closer but then it gets less sharp. If I had a pound for every time I’ve had to explain that.’

Heh. Me too… Funnily yesterday to my Mummy Dearest who has an ancient tv, over 20yrs at least, the amount of times I’ve told her to get a new one is limitless, but yesterday I was looking at it closer and I could a actually SEE the pixels snd pointed it out to her, saying how cross stitch & diamond embroidery is the same thing, essentially, don’t think she was impressed. Heh.

a raving psychopath if the autopsy

Why oh why do we overuse that word, the first person who used it in a glib way for shock effect should be shot! A psychopath is not your everyday murderer, there are certain boxes and actions etc that are needed to meet that requirement.

crushed to death

Beyond that, replacing old friends with new was time-consuming and soul-destroying.

Oh boy do I know that road! Still friendless. I think moving as an adult to a new area or country, us very difficult to find new friends, you don’t go clubbing or bars or gym or work not helping out, it’s near impossible to meet new people who you may feel able to connect with.

affected him as physically as it did.

Singing my song, I don’t think I’ll ever trust another person, no matter how much I may like them, the damage has been done, I don’t even trust my Mummy Dearest

psychopath

Pfft Could this person be one? Maybe maybe, but I think by the end of the book it’ll be a no as I don’t see him/her (thinking her) hurting baby puppies or wetting the bed, but I guess anything’s possible. What I see is hatred and rage, lots of rage, to different but similar people, leading me to think it’s connected snd my first guess is that it’s something yo do with abuse as I already said.

This is someone who feels nothing at all. No panic, no fear, no sense of danger. Nothing at all.’

Oh they do though, they’re egotistical narcissists and that’s the common fatal flaw with them. They just cannot help themselves, they need glory, they want their name in shining lights, but ‘The Scottish Sun’ will do at a pinch!

Odd on one night,

Ala ‘Strangers On A Train?’ Didn’t think of that til now.

Callanach stood still until she’d walked round a corner. Keeping a steady smile on his face and his pace measured, he went back to his office and shut his door. Then he slammed

Yup, this is why I trust no one, oh yeah, and I loved The X Files

There’s tomato sauce if you want it. I can’t eat without it.’

Putting thst on a casserole? A casserole self sauces pretty much…

piling more sausages in a beefy tomato sauce onto Callanach’s plate,

See?!

Some woman was at your door

This is the highlight page, sorry for so much, but this comment, along with the pretty neighbor makes me wonder if it’s all a setup, get him drunk or whatever to get him done agsin like before. My little red fishies are hard at work on it as we speak.

‘Fuck,’ he said, stripping off his suit and going to shower,

Well, besides the fact I’d love to be a fly on that shower wall, the is she is he dance these 2 are playing is making them appear a little stupid, to be blunt, they’re adults, not just that, but adult police officers, trained to understand and see things the average person doesn’t, and yet this??

He turned his face up into the steaming spray of water and slid a hand down to his

Really? Adds nothing at all to the story but a lewd comment, and trust me I’m far FAR from a prude, but sexual text should have something that develops the story, not this.

having finally made the choice to buy the drug that might offer him relief,

Don’t think that will actually help, he needs to get her out of his system, and the way he reacted when he thought about the non rapee, to coin a phrase, maybe he should work on that, maybe imagining doing what she falsely accused him of, IN HIS MIND, would help to throw her out of his system, only the once mind you, otherwise instead of pushing her out he’d be doing the exact opposite and teaching his brain to relate her with positive sexual activity.

child literacy programmes

You don’t say?… Trifecta so far Ding ding Ding

Something rotten hung in the air,

Duh He should know the smell of a dead body, he should of done it a couple times and know exactly what it was.

tears.

I won’t highlight the full sentence, but it’s a good way of humanizing all of the characters.

‘I need a bed,’

Oh bah humbug! I have scoliosis & I fall over ALL the time, well too much anyways, I have a direct line to St Johns, not kidding. And I haven’t wussed out like this from any of them. Time to put on those big boy pants Callan!

‘The weapon was extremely fine and extremely sharp.

So your looking at a surgical tool, scalpel blade or any other item sharp enough to do this, I’d suggest ENT tools as they’re all much smaller and sharper just because of where they’re used. The dissectors etc would again be helpful Or he made / adapted his own one again…

‘Not the same weapon, but possibly

Ding ding Ding the spidey web will take credit for that, the fishies are too busy squabbling different handles a blade could be attached to, snd me, the Ego is throwing a spanner in the works by saying a good old BP handle will do, ala Occam’s Razor, don’t fix what ain’t broke

she had disappeared.

Think there’s more behind thst? Oh YES indeedy there will be, next book maybe?

a book he was in the middle of reading.

Wouldn’t see an avid reader leaving that behind, unless your one of those weirdos who reads multiple books at a time, just so they can look all prissy! Me it’s one book, every minute I can, then onto the next, preferably the next book in a series, I do like book 1 to …… and especially if they’re 500+ pagers too, something to get my eyes into ;)

someone who seemed non-threatening.’

Every now and then I’m getting my little red fishies squishing away in my ears about more than one killer, how about a couple, female, not threatening, looks normal, but really really isn’t, then a male, he doesn’t even remotely look normal and he completely is what he appears. What a prospective couple…

Callanach was handed a crime scene suit with accessories. He really shouldn’t have bothered taking the last ones off, he thought.

Yeah, but that’d pretty much completely defeat the purpose of them, non?…

scout meeting

Very minor spoiler, more my own ideas as such Quadfecta ? Ok it’s not a real real word, but ‘if I fits, I sits’ Scouts, another area of community with ties to vulnerable people Hell maybe there’s an entire group of them, nah, but I’m thinking The Deadly Duo still

primary school teacher

Ding a ling ding

He grabbed a clean sheet of paper and a pen, and wrote the names of the four victims currently in limbo at the city mortuary. Death by

How they were killed may well of been what the killers think of as just revenge, but I’m still thinking it’s their actions, or thought of actions, that link thrm, even if not physically linked, but linked somehow

It seemed to be a dead end.

Dumbing them done again, hell if I can make a reasonable connection, pretty much immediately from just victim one, the characters should

Seems to me there’s not much left to explore from the victim perspective.

Really? Well, that’s why he’s a reporter snd not a cop.

If his names indicative of his beginnings, then I don’t see him as bad, nor do his actions to date.

BSA

Ohh classic old school, it’s a keeper for sure

the capital letters screamed.

But read it in the right way it’s to be taken in the negative ala “how could she?!? She was a ……” Sounds slightly differently like that, huh …

scout meeting

Maybe it may be in some or all of them, it’s not what they did, it’s what they didn’t do?…

why risk getting caught for the sake of making your mark?

Because at some stage they WILL want to say why, just not yet…

‘Let’s keep in touch.’

I can always pick the good ones, unfortunately though I’m not that good at picking the bad ones. Not a great sliding scale I guess :|

It would have taken an extreme amount of effort to have moved her dead body.

Not if she was dragged, that’d work double duty, hiding her snd moving her, people always thunk carrying when you consider it, dragging is so much easier

carrying

Oh pftt

father,

Oh oh For my fathers sins… That’d work if this, I’ll say group for now, were abused and then had to grow up, then become what they are, then killing the children of the, god I’ll stick to my usual ‘baddies’ but yeah, killing their children in a way that’s a specifically revenged form, works for me… We’re getting there…

The killer couldn’t have chosen a

Which is why my theory has evolved

‘Tripp, what was Helen Lott’s job title again?

Duh, the pennys are dropping faster now, at least to the same as the body count!

The Unsung’s recent hack.

Both cases are combined, it’s sad it took me this long to think about it, maybe as this case kinda got sidelined. However you’ve got goody 2 shoes on both of them, thunk about it…