Beneath Her Skin, a review by Tanya

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Beneath Her Skin: A Kes Morris File
C.S. Porter

224 pages
Published Oct 6th, 2021 by Nimbus Publishing Limited

Amazon | Goodreads

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About the Book:

She knew her process. Knew the itch in her nerves. The cold hardness creeping in. She was pulling on the killer’s skin too fast. Something wild flickered across her heart. When she fully donned it, there wouldn’t be room for anyone else but the killer and her.

When a small east coast town falls prey to a series of shocking murders, city homicide detective Kes Morris is called in to lead the case with the aid of the local precinct. As usual, she’s the only woman in the room, and must draw on the lessons passed down by her detective father, a furtive and dangerous practice of going deep inside a killer’s mind to put on their skin.
What Kes uncovers is a web of gruesome crimes reaching back decades, and a town that may have been complicit. With a reputation of being hard, relentless and unbending to authority, she finds herself on the hunt for a killer seeking brutal retribution, someone who takes sadistic pleasure in the death and wants their work seen. The farther she follows the trail, the more the line blurs between guilt and innocence, predator and prey.
An atmospheric thriller with complex characters, Beneath Her Skin signals the emergence of a bold new voice in crime fiction and a dark and thrilling new series.

My Review:

I have so many things to say about this book!

  1. I am not happy with this cover!  I get why it is relevant, but I think it’s really off-putting and needs to immediately receive a cover worthy of the story it contains!
  2. Kes is a riveting character and I feel like this story just scratched the surface of the multiple layers that Porter can uncover for the readers with this new Detective.  I am glad to see this is a new series and excited to get more of her history and watch her develop over time.  I’m a real fan!
  3. The crime scenes were….horrific!  Well, some of them were.  To be fair, I guess any crime scene can be described that way but Porter came up with a couple of new scenes that I would NEVER have thought of in my life.  They had me talking out loud to an empty room or to my husband, where he promptly replied, “WHAT are you reading?”   Ha!
  4. Since this is a fair review – I will say that there were a few drawbacks, the police work, forensic evidence descriptions seemed a bit inaccurate.  I don’t think a crime scene is left to the next day to be worked… maybe because this is a small town, that’s how it works? I don’t know but that doesn’t sound accurate.  Also, some of the detective work that needed to be researched didn’t seem to be focused on in a timely manner.  At least for me some of that seemed a little bit off, but I’m no expert.  I do think that some of this focus could be a little tighter and a little more accurate overall. However, this didn’t even take away from the story for me.
  5. The book is really short, less than 250 pages, but Porter did an amazing job with her characters. I felt like they were well described and I could easily picture them in my mind.  Really well done!
  6. It’s such a fast paced read, it grabbed me from page 1 and I read it within 24 hours. Once the story broke open, it’s just gut-wrenching!  This one is going to stick with me for awhile! I had some tears in a couple of places during this read.
  7. It appears that Porter is a relatively new author – this may be their 2nd published book per Goodreads.  I’m a fan!  I can’t wait for Porter’s next work!  I love when I find a new(ish) author with such a great book – what else is in store for us as readers with their upcoming work?  I wonder!

If you are a fan of Detective books, Crime Thrillers (somewhat graphic), Murder Mysteries (not cozy), I urge you to pick this one up!

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