Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

When I read the opening sentences of THE BASEMENT, I thought I was going to love it: "New York always brings out the serial killer in me. It's a great city to kill in. The best." Instead, I was pretty much revolted by it. It's told in two voices, the first-person voice of a social misfit suspected of being the serial killer (which he may be) and the second-person voice that puts the reader in the role of the serial killer (which may be the misfit). The writing is fine, the plot has potential, but the execution is distasteful. While I can imagine this book being described as "An Intimate Look into the Mind of a Serial Killer," the fact is that it is a romanticized look into the mind of a serial killer, yet it's also remote. The reader doesn't get to know much about the characters except that one or two are especially twisted. The abducted and tortured victim is two-dimensional, having no life in the reader's mind unless she is being written about. The misfit is a wannabe screenwriter who finds himself clever, particularly when he's sassing the cops--he's just obnoxious. The author's research is inadequate, for example his characters seem to be Americans, yet they all use British colloquialisms, and he describes New York as having 15 million people living within its borders, when the population is closer to 8.2 million. Casting the reader as the serial killer is an interesting, promising choice, but reading that you are performing certain tortures or killing and dismembering people (and getting turned on about it) doesn't really appeal to those who abhor the actions of serial killers. Yes, an intimate look into their minds might be interesting, but having a serial killer's mind transplanted into one's own brain is not especially appealing.