Dead Memories
Angela Marsons
Can you run that past me one more time?
If you’ve made it to book 10 of Angela Marsons‘s Kim Stone series, you already know that Kim had a terrible childhood. You know this in some detail, starting with the day on which her brother died, after weeks chained by their psychotic mother to a radiator with Kim and left to die of thirst and starvation. And that was only the beginning of the parade of horrors that was Kim’s childhood. She has repressed those memories and has succeeded in her profession to the extent of becoming a Detective Inspector leading a team of highly competent homicide detectives.
You know this because Marsons rehearses Kim’s childhood at every appropriate opportunity, not to mention inappropriate ones.
OK, I get it. Kim is the heart of the story that Marsons wants to tell. The problem, though, is that Marsons‘s readers (or this one, at least) can have enough of it. There are other good things in the series, other things that are done well. I know that Marsons is never going to get past Kim’s childhood, but I’ve been hoping she would become a little less obsessive about it.
That is not what happens in Dead Memories. In fact, it’s the opposite of what happens. The premise of Dead Memories -- I’m not counting this as a spoiler, because the publisher’s blurb tells it -- is that one of the many people who hate Kim is getting revenge by recreating the worst events of Kim’s life with new victims.
Aside from the continued obsession, this plot is too cute by half. It feels much more like a supervillain/superhero story. It’s like the Joker and Batman, or Lex Luthor and Superman -- a criminal genius who goes to implausibly elaborate lengths to act out a revenge fantasy. Now, to be honest, I like superhero comics. But I don’t especially like this one. I can see a three-star rating, and I will continue with the series for at least one more novel, in the hope that Marsons got it out of her system.