The Sculptor by Gregory Funaro (2010)

Alas, I really wanted to like this book, but it was not to be.  From the outset where Tommy the football star awakens to a dream sequence and the beginning of chapter one where we experience the same kind of opening with Dr. Hildebrandt until the very end with the faux cliff hanger I struggled mightily. For me the test of a book is the hook at the beginning and a single question at the end: what do I remember about the story?  To the first, I didn’t find the hook compelling and to the second I have to answer: not much.  Thank goodness I dog-eared pages.

However, I was impressed was the amazing amount of detail about Michelangelo and his art as well as some of the graphic description of murder and mutilation.  It must have taken hundreds of hours to research and then distill the historic information down for easy consumption.  The details gave the characters and plot credibility if not plausibility.  As for the graphic details of murder and mutilation I tend to be in the school of less is more, but that is matter of taste. 

This novel is all about Christian Bach aka the Sculptor aka the Michelangelo Killer.  Everything in the book is geared toward learning about him.  Our protagonists, Cathy Hildebrant and Sam Markham spend the entire book attempting to figure him out in order to track him down and stop him before he finishes his masterpiece.   A pretty typical plot for a psychological thriller. Except a major pillar of the thriller is a clock.  The bad guy has to be stopped before something happens. So I'm not certain this fits as a thriller. Question: what happens if Christian does or doesn’t accomplish his goal?  We never find out, but that isn’t the point. He’s the bad guy and must be caught. Fair enough because those are the rules, right?  But what’s at stake?  Will he continue to kill until he’s exhausted all of Michelangelo’s masterpieces?  Or will he feel satisfied at the completion of the Pieta’ and then retire to a life of leisure?  We never find out.  Or, I should say, I don’t recall. 

In fact, what we learn about Christian isn’t revealed in any detail until the last quarter of the book.  Bits of his life are flashed before our eyes: he’s a caretaker; a genius, rich, his mother died and so on, but nothing in depth about his past or his true motivation.  This worked for me because what he was up to was more interesting and important than the Why for a while.  In a plot where you have a FBI profiler and an Art Expert tracking down a psychopath we don’t need to know why he is doing what he is doing immediately.  That is what the protagonists are there to uncover.  And so it was in this case also. 

As psychopaths go Christian Bach has everything it takes to move to the head of the class: money, brains, super strength, sexual confusion, high motivation, incestuous mother and something to say.  Yep, the total package of screwed.  Everything except he’s a clump of Playdough smashed against the images of psychos from characters past.  A copy if there ever was one lacking a morsel of originality.  More about this at the end.

So what else do we learn about Christian?  The author chose to create him as a sexually confused homosexual who was molested by an alcoholic mother and believes his relationship with her is the same as Christ and the Virgin Mary.  So toss in some religious issues as well.  He is confused about his body and is, at one point, compared to a “naked Schwarzenegger” with a hairless torso and bald head.  The bald head still confuses me because I don’t know why this was an important feature unless Christian saw himself as a statue also.  Never-the-less, he gets sexual pleasure from watching his victims die or as he believes “awakens.”  I’m still trying to figure that one out.  A part of me expected him to go to his closet and find David Carradine’s naked body hanging from a belt inside.  It was the only thing missing.

Okay, what does this mean?  It means the author borrowed just about every characteristic of popular psycho thrillers of the last decade to create Christian.  And therein lay the problem I have with the book. It was one of the problems.  From the very first page, I felt like I had read the story before.  That’s how familiar it felt.  On the front cover there is a blurb by Gregg Olsen,

 “It reminded me of why I loved The Silence of the Lambs so much.”

 Well, Gregg, would you like to know why it reminded you of that book?  Might it be that Christian was a knockoff of Buffalo Bill?  Maybe it was the male version of Clarice Starling in the form of Sam Markham.  They channeled Lecter instead of bringing him in physically.  How about the self-flagellating Albino from The Davinci Code?  How about the plot of the Davinci Code while we’re at it?  The university professor and the cop seek clues to a secret in the art of a famous art master.  How about the fire scene from Red Dragon?  It was there too.  Toss in a few of James Patterson super smart villains for good measure.  Mix in the scene from the MUMMY where the priest tries to reanimate Anck-Su-Namun.  All of it intermingled in with gratuitous sexual content and violence that had no real purpose other than to titillate.  Not to mention equating homosexuality with insanity.  Geez! 

Big problem, Dr. Hildy somehow channeled the voice of Christian’s mother while she lay naked and strapped to the table.  What the hell?  Was she momentarily possessed?  Only one of the many times I slammed the book down and walked away.    

I have to ask, did we really need a love connection between the two protagonist?  I didn’t.  I thought it was silly.  They get married at the end.  Really?  Fah-la-la, happy ending.  Until Christian comes back in a later book.  No body was found, remember? 

Even as I finished reading the last lines of the happy ending and the implied threat of a copycat or possibly survival of Christian, I still had to wonder as to his motivation.  What was he trying to accomplish?  Was it to have Hildebrandt realize he saw her as his mother?  Then why was trying to kill her at the end?  Was it some message to the world?  If so, I go back to my earlier question about what was he expecting once he accomplished his goal?  Maybe one of you figured it out.  If you did, then maybe you can tell me why in the already stuffy and stiff dialogue it was necessary to constantly use the name of the character when they were talking to each other.  Very annoying. 

            “Hello, Sam.”

            “Hello, Cathy.”

            “Sam, do you think we’ll ever know each other well enough to stop announcing each other’s name.”

            “Well, Cathy, I understand this is a great way to memorize the names of strangers.”

I think the book was probably 100 pages too long.  Specifically, chapters 11 and 12 could have been edited out.  Those chapters deal with the parents of two victims.  The character of Bill Burrell didn’t really do anything to move the story along.  He was well written, but he was set up to be a road block and that never materialized.  

I wanted to like this book, but I was distracted by the familiarity with too many other novels or movies I knew.  I didn’t buy it and I didn’t feel the need to find out what happened next.  I felt as though I was reading a recipe to a dish I'd eaten many times before.