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The Cleaner (2006)

by Paul Cleave(Favorite Author)

3.71 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1451677790 (ISBN13: 9781451677799)

languge

English

genre

Mystery & Thriller

publisher

Atria Books

series

Cleaner

review 1: This is Paul Cleave's first book; it is also the direct prequel to Joe Victim, his latest book which I read recently. Since I read the books the wrong way round I knew all the who-dunnits in this book but did not know the whys or hows. This did affect my enjoyment of the book and I do highly recommend you read the two books in the proper order! However, I enjoyed Joe Victim so much I just had to read the beginnings of his story. This (well both books) is a very unique take on the serial killer book as it is almost entirely told from the killer's point of view and we hardly even get to know the police investigators in this first beginning book. They have developed into characters by the time we get to the latest book, Joe Victim, the 7th in the series, though. But her... moree, they show up occasionally and mostly through Joe, the cleaner's, point of view. The scary thing about this story is that even with the entire violent, ruthless murders we are somehow drawn to Joe and he does become an unwillingly sympathetic character to the reader in an unsettling way to my dismay, even though he is completely unlikable as a person and unreliable as a narrator. Occasionally another narrator will take over and we get an outsider's take on the case, but as I said this is not from the police themselves; they are kept as background characters making this a very unique style of thriller which I thoroughly enjoyed. I just didn't get the full impact since I had already read the sequel which keeps no secrets of the events that happen here. I'm impressed with this author and will move on to his next book which revolves around the same police department in Christchurch, NZ.
review 2: I only gave this 4 stars because I miss the main characters from his other books. This was released after but in the series it's book one. A little different as the main character was the killer. At first I wasn't quite sure how I would like that but as the story unfolds it was actually really good. I would definitely recommend this book. Read it before his others or after as I did. It blends in well either was I think less

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