The Bone Parade

October 20, 2003
A starred or boxed review indicates a book of outstanding quality. A review with a blue-tinted title indicates a book of unusual commercial interest that hasn't received a starred or boxed review.

THE BONE PARADE
Mark Nykanen
. Hyperion
, $24.95 (432p) ISBN 1-4013-0018-9

An award-winning former investigative journalist, Nykanen (Hush
) falters in his second novel, a gruesome chiller that's an amalgamation of Red Dragon
and The Silence of the Lambs
. Ashley Stassler is a world-famous sculptor who abducts and kills entire families (cue the Red Dragon) in order to make the ultimate "art" from their dying flesh (remember Buffalo Bill?), and his ego is even bigger than his reputation ("I expect I'll not only be forgiven but I'll be more sought after than ever before. There'll be rock bands named Stassler, and my sculpture will sell for several times its original price"). Nykanen's spin on these Thomas Harris tropes gives the killer his own first-person POV and one of his latest victims a particularly disturbing case of Stockholm syndrome ("I clamp my hand over her mouth.... And then—I don't believe it—she slips her tongue against my fingers. What a wench.... I love her"). In a lackluster subplot, a junior art professor named Lauren Reed learns that her most promising student has gone missing during an internship at Stassler's Utah ranch. The connection is a hunky reporter named Ry Chambers, who interviews Lauren as well as Stassler. Nykanen loads up his tale with plenty of voyeuristic sadism on Stassler's end, while the predictable trysting between Lauren and Ry is all gushy romance ("her mouth opened as readily as leaves in the desert to an early morning mist"). Fans of Harris and other dark thriller writers may eat this one up, but no amount of good details or spine-tingling descriptions can replace original plotting and characters. Agent, Luke Janklow.
(Feb.)

Forecast:
Despite its flaws, this has impulse-buy potential: Nykanen's grisly scenarios leap off the page and will likely hook browsers. Though its shock value may not translate into staying power, early sales could be lively. Author tour.

November 15, 2003
Nykanen's second novel (after the Edgar Award-winning Hush) opens as Ashley Stassler, a world-famous sculptor, is kidnapping a family of four destined to become his new offering to the art world. Using alginate-that icky stuff dentists use to make impressions of teeth-Stassler covers his victims to make a skin from which he can cast his bronze figures. (The people die during the process, but they, in Stassler's estimation, should be flattered that he's using them as a medium.) This is the ninth family that he has captured but not a typical one: he soon finds that the teenaged daughter is a budding sociopath like him. At the same time, Laureen Reed, a professor of art, has sent her most promising student, Kerry Waters, to Stassler as an intern. When Kerry disappears, Reed searches for her. Despite the allusions to Thomas Harris's Red Dragon, the characters here are underdeveloped and the plot predictable. By the end, the story takes off, but, of course, it's too late. For larger fiction collections and readers possessing strong stomachs.-Jo Ann Vicarel, Cleveland Heights-University Heights P.L., OH

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2003
In less talented hands, it might have been easy to dismiss this thriller as derivative. But the author, whose first novel, " Hush "(1998), was gripping and very scary, rises above his somewhat familiar material. Like " Hush," this one is told from various points of view: Lauren, the sculpting instructor; Kerry, the student selected to intern with a world-famous sculptor; and the sculptor himself, Ashley Stassler, whose brilliant depictions of families caught in moments of extreme agony are created in the most frightening way imaginable. Stassler is by far the more compelling of the lead characters, a noted artist who kidnaps families and turns them into works of art, and we are always a little disappointed when the narrative shifts away from him. A certain plot twist is a bit too similar to one in the Hannibal Lecter series, and Stassler's fate is thoroughly predictable. Even with these missteps, however, the novel is deeply unsettling and exciting--a testament to the author's skill as a storyteller.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)