Close Enough to Kill

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, I thought I should review something with a bit of... romance. Unfortunately, all I had was Close Enough to Kill, and there's absolutely nothing to love about it.

The main characters are Bernie Granger and Jim Norton. Bernie is the sheriff of Adams County, Alabama who is desperate to prove herself, as a woman, as the new sheriff, and as the successor to her father, the previous sheriff. Jim is a good man who has just divorced from his banshee of an ex-wife and only wants to do right by his kid. He previously worked the glamorous job of Memphis P.D. detective, but took a cut in both pay and prestige and joined the Adams County police force to be closer to his son (who is in the custody of his ex-wife). Jim is also a (regionally) famous ex-college football player, whom Bernie just happened to have a massive crush on growing up. Just as Jim arrives at his new job, the victim of what ends up being a string of serial murders is discovered, and Bernie and Jim dive into the case as new partners.

And the book is just... ugh.

The killer follows the same M.O. every time. He sends gifts to his victim, then sends drawings (which start tasteful but quickly become obscene), then kidnaps them, then spends a couple of weeks raping them in his torture dungeon, and then finally ends their suffering and dumps their naked corpse in a field somewhere.

You'd think with such an elaborate scheme, he'd get caught up somewhere. You'd think that there'd be one woman who finds getting lewd gifts from an anonymous stranger unnerving rather than flattering and go to the police. You'd think that once the police figured out what was going on, they'd put out an alert for women to be careful and come forward if they got any of these things. Obviously, you'd be wrong on every account.

The back of the book talks about how brilliant the culprit is and how he's always one step ahead of the police, but... he doesn't do anything. Except for the elaborate M.O. I described above. If any of the victims thought what was going on was creepy, went to the police, and had a sting operation set up, he'd get caught easily. That's not exactly what I'd describe as particularly genius. (Eventually, after hundreds and hundreds of pages, we actually do get a sting operation. As a result, the culprit decides to come up with a "brilliant" plan to outsmart the police and abscond with his victim. Said brilliant plan? Walk up and shoot everyone.)

There's nothing more to the serial killings besides the extended wooing and then torture sessions. Jim is able to piece together the entire thing with what feels like a grand total of thirty minutes of effort (spread out over weeks, of course, because heaven forbid this book get anywhere in a reasonable timeframe), which just begs the question of why nobody else was able to do so until now. [The next sentence is going to have some plot spoilers. This book isn't worth it, and they aren't that major, but even in this case I can't bring myself to just give spoilers with no warning.] It turns out everything began with a clique of high school girls in another town, and you'd have thought that the police would've noticed something was going on when an entire circle of friends all started getting brutally killed in the exact same way. Sigh.

The culprit is exceedingly obvious from the first scene he shows up in, so there isn't even any sort of fun to be had in trying to figure out who it is. It's actually kind of hilarious, because the book constantly talks about how nobody would EVER suspect him and how he was the last person ANYBODY thought could be the culprit when he may as well be parading around with a massive sign that says "I did it lol." (In my quest to figure out how in the world this book has a 4.15/5-star rating on Goodreads, I was amused by the number of reviews that essentially said "I was able to figure out the culprit early, but other people will probably have some trouble with the mystery.")

If all this didn't sound bad enough, remember how I mentioned that the culprit rapes and tortures his victims before killing them? We're treated to several scenes of this, which go into excruciating detail. So not only is there a boring, obvious mystery, but we're forced to sit through explicit rape scenes along the way.

But as I said at the start, Close Enough to Kill is also a romance novel. There's plenty of explicit consensual sex scenes as well. Hurrah.

Jim and Bernie are good, nice people. You do legitimately root for them and want them to succeed. They are HORRIBLE at their jobs, and you constantly scream at them for being so stupid, but you don't want bad things to happen to them.

In fact, everyone in the book is nice and sweet and warm and hospitable and genial and good-looking and considerate and kindhearted and oozing with Southern charm. Well, except for Jim's ex-wife, but she gets cancer, so serves her right for being so mean to Jim. I really don't understand what's up with these people, because every meal is some ridiculously extravagant Southern feast, yet every guy is buff and every woman is either thin and toned or curvy in all the right places. (Fun fact, Alabama is the seventh most obese state in the country.)

When writing my review for The ???????? Murder Case, due to the explicit sex scene in it, I toyed with the idea of a comment along the lines of, "If you want to read erotica but want other people to think you're high-class reader of mystery novels, then The ???????? Murder Case might be the book for you." As a joke.

If you want to read erotica and have a kink for rape and torture but want other people to think you're a high-class reader of mystery novels when in reality you hate mysteries with a burning passion, then Close Enough to Kill might be the book for you. That's not a joke.