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Mister Slaughter (2010)

by Robert McCammon(Favorite Author)

4.24 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1596062762 (ISBN13: 9781596062764)

languge

English

genre

Mystery & Thriller

publisher

Subterranean Press

series

Matthew Corbett

review 1: I love this series, and Matthew Corbett is one of my favorites. This book is indeed different from books 1 and 2, in that it relies almost completely on suspense, since the plot is a foregone conclusion. Despite this, I found it compelling. The first two books contained a small amount of true gore - just enough to cringe - but this book hands out massive amounts of gore and muck. I knew that before starting it, and I didn't mind it too much, as a result. I highly recommend the Matthew Corbett series. Please start at the beginning with Speaks the Nightbird. I listened to each of these books through my audible membership/app. Eduardo Ballerini is superb in his narration and characterizations - he is one of my favorites, and this series is one of the reasons... more why.
review 2: MISTER SLAUGHTER is the third in the series of Matthew Corbett detective novels. Corbett lives in New York at the beginning of the 18th century and works for the London- and New York-based Herrald Agency, a small problem-solving business . In the current adventure, Matthew and senior partner Hudson Greathouse, are hired to transport Slaughter, a dangerous and likely deranged highwayman to New York for extradition back to England to answer for his crimes. Naturally, things go horribly wrong, Slaughter escapes, and Matthew must track him down in the wilds of the New York countryside and environs and recapture him.This novel is by far the bloodiest and most violent of the three. Slaughter is a clever monster who will stop at nothing to get what he wants, his freedom, leaving behind a trail of mayhem, gore and extreme physical and psychological violence. Matthew is aided in his hunt by two excellent supporting characters, a young London-educated Seneca indian brave and a very tough and resourceful young teenaged boy. There are a couple of ancillary mysteries and side plots to be negotiated along the way, some amusing and some that foreshadow events that will unfold in future novels.While MISTER SLAUGHTER surely is historical fiction, and there is a lot of history here, McCammon plays the history a little faster and looser with than he did in the first novel, and some might object to non-period speech styles, but this did not bother me at all, although I did take note of it. There is an afterward in which McCammon explains that after he wrote the first novel that needed to be set to coincide with the end of the witch hunting era, he decided that a New York of the 1730s was a more interesting setting for the remainder of the series than that of turn of the century. Not wanting to age Matthew into his 50s, he decided to take certain liberties with the times and places. I understand the decision, even if it does confuse a bit of the history. If I had to work up a criticism of the novel, I guess it would be that some of the events near the end are just a bit over the top, and Matthew's physical prowess seems at times just a bit too limited to go one on one with the giant and far more experienced killer, Slaughter.MISTER SLAUGHTER is the fastest paced of all the novels so far, and contains bits of intentional humor to offset the extreme horror that is all around whenever Slaughter is in the picture. While I do miss the supernatural horror that McCammon used to write (and in fact still does occasionally), his last half-dozen books or so, while more mainstream, are just as good (or better) and just as enjoyable as anything that he has written. I'll be ordering THE PROVIDENCE RIDER, the fourth and most recently published entry in the series, as soon as I post this review.Recommended.J.M. Tepper less

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