Judging from the customer reviews on Amazon.com, there’s a market for Karen Rose books.  Those leaving comments say she is their favorite author and that they are huge fans.  I find it hard to understand: this mammoth book (16 CDs, 496 pages) was unpleasant from start to finish.  It is a psychokiller mystery with a strong streak of romance.  The killer first murders women, and then dresses them up and makes it looks like they have hung themselves, but he puts them in exactly the same clothes and in the same position in each scene.  The setting is the Twin Cities; the main detective hero is Noah Webster, and the main heroine/potential victim is Eve Wilson.  (The biblical first names are never explained.)  They are both damaged people: Noah lost his wife and child and went through a period of alcoholism, while Eve has been kidnapped twice by killers who tortured and disfigured her.  She works behind the cop bar, and they steal longing glances at each other when he comes in. 

Eve is in a Masters program in psychology, aiming to become qualified to help people in need.  Her research thesis is on Shadowland, a virtual role playing world that is a thinly veiled version of Second Life.  She is examining whether it can help people become more socially confident.  It turns out that some of the women being killed were part of the among the research subjects in her study, so she starts to wonder whether there is a link between the killer and her research. 

There are many subplots and there’s a long list of characters.  Murders pile up quickly.  The romance starts to catch fire.  The plot gets complicated.  Rose writes from the perspective of the main protagonists: Noah, Eve, and the killer, apparently giving us a glimpse into their minds.  We get fairly graphic descriptions of the murders and the killer’s thoughts.  Rose’s psychological insight is thin, which makes the story very unsatisfying.

The most potentially interesting plotline is about Shadowland, the virtual community, with its emotionally fragile inhabitants who often spend many hours each day there.  Eve calls them hyper users.  But here too, the descriptions are superficial and Second Life aficionados will be unimpressed.  Other readers get little understanding of what drives people to spend so much time in this virtual reality.  At best, the book serves as a cautionary tale: if you spend too much time in a virtual role playing game, you might be murdered for real.

By the time I got to the final CD, I was rooting for the killer, hoping that he would finish off all the other main characters.  But that’s not what happens. 

Elisabeth Rodgers gives a consistent reading of the unabridged audiobook, and the recording is professional.  She has a dramatic flair, and although she hams it up, that’s what the text calls for. 

© 2009 Christian Perring         

Christian Perring, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Dowling College, New York.

Keywords: audiobook