Video Kill

By Joanne Fluke

Book Overview

Lights. . .Camera. . . With painstaking care, he "casts" his victims, each woman resembling an Alfred Hitchcock star, each killing echoing six of the legendary director's films. The only clue he leaves behind is a gruesome video of his handiwork. But the Video Killer shoots the death scenes as he believes they should have been done--with total realism. . . Kill A former actress, Allison Rocca knows her husband, Tony, a screenwriter, has been extra busy lately. And news reporter Katy knows her ex, Chief Detective Sam Ladera, is desperately hunting the Video Killer. Still, each woman senses something unusual about the men's behavior. But as they attempt to find the truth, they unwittingly draw closer to the lens of a calculating madman searching for his next leading lady. . .

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0758289693
• ISBN13: 9780758289698
• Release Date: May 2013
• Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corporation
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 0.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 4.3" x 7.4"

Customer Reviews

"A maniac is taping Hollywood's starlets--"

"--And they're dying for the role..."Set in Los Angeles, California, "Video Kill" follows Erik Neilsen and Tony Rocca, a Hollywood writing team trying to sell their movie script about "a psychopath who videotape[s] his victims as he murder[s] them", but with no luck. That is, until almost a year later when a handful of actresses are murdered one by one, similar to how Erik and Tony had written. Now the two writers are called in to create a screenplay based on the Video Killer's movie-remaking murders, a la Alfred Hitchcock style (eg, "Frenzy," "Rear Window," etc.).Despite the "Psycho"-like front cover of a naked dead girl in a bathtub, the murder scenes aren't very graphic or sexualized, which non-horror readers might appreciate. It was a fast read, though (I finished it in a couple days), but it wasn't as suspenseful as I'd hoped. The red herrings weren't very believable for one, and I guessed the killer partway through, mainly due to his/her work history and aversion to blood. The suspense near the end was kind of ruined for me, too, when his/her identity was revealed a little too soon. Still, this being my first Joanne Fluke book, I look forward to reading more by her. Along with several other horror novels published by Pocket Books in the '80s, this one was pretty enjoyable.