Official Review: Final Sacrament by Bill Murphy
Posted: 23 Dec 2014, 09:47
[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Final Sacrament" by Bill Murphy.]
2 out of 4 stars
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Final Sacrament is book # 3 in the Thriller series, written by Bill Murphy.
Nancy Kronziac is no stranger to gruesome crime scenes. As an FBI agent tasked with tracking down the most ruthless murderers, Kronziac finds herself in an intense game of cat and mouse with a sadistic killer once again.
After an illegal weapons trade sting operation goes south and a fellow agent is killed, Kronziac is trying to pick up the pieces of her personal and professional life, while an investigation team seems hellbent on placing the blame for the botched op solely upon her.
In the meantime, a sadistic killer is on the loose. Posing as an insurance salesman, he gains his victims trust with his charming personality and love affair for the arts. He uses his victims corpses to recreate scenes from a famous set of religious paintings. Once the bodies are positioned just right with the use of piano wire, the killer takes a photograph and uploads the picture to an Art based web forum.
With the help of her team, and outside advisors, Kronziac must decipher the killers encoded messages and cryptic symbolism in order to stop him before he completes the Final Sacrament.
This book is written from multiple perspectives, including the killer’s, with the main point of view coming from the hero of the story. I found this makes the story interesting, although hard to follow at some points. I also felt as if the killer’s parts could have been expounded upon a little to give some insight into his reasoning. There were little snippets that gave you a brief glimpse of who the killer is and why he was doing it, but not enough to get a real sense of the killer as a person. It also felt very formulaic and short to the point for most of the murder scenes, as if it almost didn’t matter and they were interchangeable..
I almost didn’t finish reading this story. It took about a third of the book for the story to actually start to develop and establish a nice flow. There were also a few side stories such as the botched operation involving the “Woodsmen” and the council of Father Raphoe that I felt didn’t really contribute to the story, and actually made it confusing at times. The book was an especially rough read in the beginning with extremely long and unneeded descriptions. For example.
The other main complaint I have about this “Thriller” is the lack of any real thrills. There was no real drama, no close calls with apprehending the killer, no real road blocks for the hero. Nothing. In fact the main character Kronziac, did little to nothing to solve the case. She relied too heavily on her team and subject matter experts to put all the pieces together for her. There was no real struggle for her, everything just seems to magically fall into place at the right time.
On a positive note, the author was clearly very knowledgeable and researched a great deal of topics from the secrets of the Vatican, to computer hacking theories and principles. The amount of knowledge, even the trivial facts like how many bushels of charcoal one cord of wood can produce, is a testament to the author's attention to detail.
In conclusion, I give this book 2 out of 4 stars. The premise of the story was great, but the delivery left me feeling underwhelmed and unsatisfied. I would give a higher rating if the plot was tidied up, and some actual excitement was introduced. So unless you’re a fan of the series, or absolutely love everything good and bad about the genre, I would probably pass on this book.
***
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2 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
Final Sacrament is book # 3 in the Thriller series, written by Bill Murphy.
Nancy Kronziac is no stranger to gruesome crime scenes. As an FBI agent tasked with tracking down the most ruthless murderers, Kronziac finds herself in an intense game of cat and mouse with a sadistic killer once again.
After an illegal weapons trade sting operation goes south and a fellow agent is killed, Kronziac is trying to pick up the pieces of her personal and professional life, while an investigation team seems hellbent on placing the blame for the botched op solely upon her.
In the meantime, a sadistic killer is on the loose. Posing as an insurance salesman, he gains his victims trust with his charming personality and love affair for the arts. He uses his victims corpses to recreate scenes from a famous set of religious paintings. Once the bodies are positioned just right with the use of piano wire, the killer takes a photograph and uploads the picture to an Art based web forum.
With the help of her team, and outside advisors, Kronziac must decipher the killers encoded messages and cryptic symbolism in order to stop him before he completes the Final Sacrament.
This book is written from multiple perspectives, including the killer’s, with the main point of view coming from the hero of the story. I found this makes the story interesting, although hard to follow at some points. I also felt as if the killer’s parts could have been expounded upon a little to give some insight into his reasoning. There were little snippets that gave you a brief glimpse of who the killer is and why he was doing it, but not enough to get a real sense of the killer as a person. It also felt very formulaic and short to the point for most of the murder scenes, as if it almost didn’t matter and they were interchangeable..
I almost didn’t finish reading this story. It took about a third of the book for the story to actually start to develop and establish a nice flow. There were also a few side stories such as the botched operation involving the “Woodsmen” and the council of Father Raphoe that I felt didn’t really contribute to the story, and actually made it confusing at times. The book was an especially rough read in the beginning with extremely long and unneeded descriptions. For example.
And again...Fr Jean Aurac Tenbuthu was 38 years old, a native Zairean born in the Sud-Kivu
region but educated in a seminary in the south of France after attaining a degree in science and letters at the Institute of Higher Studies d’Oultremare in Paris.”
To me, passages like these really bog the reader down and don't actually contribute much to the story, other than useless information. Luckily, this overuse of descriptive text doesn’t persist throughout the entire book. In fact, once the author hits his stride, the story has a nice pace to it.The boat was a floating shanty of about two thousand people crowded on the open decks, with families in circles on mats and raffia blankets and traders with cardboard stalls selling everything from rolled croc skins, catfish and curls of manioc to rusting cans of food heaped like colourful grenades.”
The other main complaint I have about this “Thriller” is the lack of any real thrills. There was no real drama, no close calls with apprehending the killer, no real road blocks for the hero. Nothing. In fact the main character Kronziac, did little to nothing to solve the case. She relied too heavily on her team and subject matter experts to put all the pieces together for her. There was no real struggle for her, everything just seems to magically fall into place at the right time.
On a positive note, the author was clearly very knowledgeable and researched a great deal of topics from the secrets of the Vatican, to computer hacking theories and principles. The amount of knowledge, even the trivial facts like how many bushels of charcoal one cord of wood can produce, is a testament to the author's attention to detail.
In conclusion, I give this book 2 out of 4 stars. The premise of the story was great, but the delivery left me feeling underwhelmed and unsatisfied. I would give a higher rating if the plot was tidied up, and some actual excitement was introduced. So unless you’re a fan of the series, or absolutely love everything good and bad about the genre, I would probably pass on this book.
***
Buy "Final Sacrament" on Amazon
View hassle-free sample of "Final Sacrament"