The bloodline
The bloodline is a thriller by the American writer Cody McFadyen . It is the author's first novel and the first story with the protagonist Smoky Barrett, which was later used in four other works. The original English version was published in 2006 under the title Shadowman . The German translation was published by the Bastei Lübbe publishing house in the same year. The book is divided into Chapter I - Dreams and Shadows, and Part II - Dreams and Consequences.
action
Smoky Barrett was the FBI's top agent at CASMIRC in Los Angeles before she was traumatized by Joseph Sands. The killer broke into her house and tied her husband Matt to an armchair so that he could watch as Sands raped Smoky and left her with a huge scar with a knife. After the killer killed Matt, Smoky freed himself to kill him. When she pulled the trigger, he abused her daughter Alexa as a protective shield. With a show of strength, the agent managed to shoot him. After constant nightmares and intensive treatment by the psychologist Dr. Hillstead returns Smoky to her team at the FBI. These include her equally attractive and direct friend Callie, the gentle giant Alan, and the brilliant but hostile James. The following morning they receive a message that Smoky's old friend Annie King was brutally murdered in San Francisco . After the psychologically disturbed agent persuaded her boss AD Jones to let her take part in the investigation, she learned more gruesome details: Annie's daughter Bonnie was handcuffed for three days to the corpse of her mother, who ran a porn site on the Internet . There is also a letter from the perpetrator, who calls himself Jack Junior and sees himself in a bloodline as the successor to Jack the Ripper . Smoky is supposed to be his Inspector Abberline .
Through a cognitive questioning of her colleague Jennifer Chang from the SFPD, Smoky gets impressions of the crime scene and the corpse. Annie was abused, murdered, and gutted. Bonnie is now catatonic and silent in the hospital. Computer expert Leo finds an edited video of the murder on the PC in the apartment. When Smoky and James try to put themselves in the shoes of the perpetrator and jump on a "black train" at the scene, they find fingerprints under the bed and recognize, based on a size difference in the video, that two perpetrators were at work. In another letter, Jack Junior explains to Smoky that the criminals were in her house. He brings back the memory that the agent shot her daughter Alexa herself when Sands used her as a protective shield, and then even aimed at her colleague Callie.
After returning to Los Angeles, Smoky uses a pistol for the first time at a shooting range and returns fully to duty. Bonnie entrusts them to Elaina, Alan's wife , who has colon cancer . In a new message, Jack Junior threatens the entire FBI team. How seriously he means it quickly becomes apparent. A fake porn website leads Callie to see her daughter Marilyn Gale, who was once up for adoption . Elaina receives a medical record with a dramatic prognosis for her chances of recovery, James' dead sister Rosa is dug up and Leo's dog loses its legs. Then Jack Junior sends a video showing how his henchman Ronnie Barnes murders madly. The act occurred the same evening as Sand's raid on Smoky.
One day after the video, the FBI receives a package with a jar that Jack Junior believes contains the preserved uterus of Ripper victim Annie Chapman . However, laboratory technician Gene Sykes reveals the contents to be beef. Inside the package is a CD with a video showing another brutal murder. Via the website of the victim Charlotte Ross, the crime scene is located where Smoky discovers a broken fingernail with traces of blood suitable for DNA analysis . The bodyguard Tommy Aguilera from the Secret Service , hired by Smoky, finds a tracking device under her car and a bug in the phone. During the night, Smoky and Tommy have sex.
The next day, Smoky speaks to the profiler Dr. Child, who believes that Jack Jr. early in the history of the Ripper conditioned was and later even trained killer. On the television news, Smoky confronts her opponent with knowledge of the contents of the glass. Leo uses Jack Junior's username in the members' area of porn sites to determine the next planned victim Leona Waters ahead of time. In their apartment, the team lures Jack's helpers into a trap. As they arrest him, other killers ambush Elaina and Bonnie. Callie is seriously injured during the rescue operation and has to undergo emergency surgery. When the team is gathered at the hospital, Jack Junior calls Smoky.
While interrogating Robert Street, arrested at Waters' apartment, Alan forces a lead on a certain Renee Parker who, according to VICAP, was murdered 25 years ago in San Francisco under the same modus operandi . There, the then responsible police officer Don Rawlings, who is now mentally impaired, reports to FBI investigators that he had a friendly relationship with Renee and that both of them had just overcome their past when the murder occurred. Smoky and her colleagues visit Patricia Connolly, the suspect's mother at the time. She tells of severe abuse by her husband Keith, who was often active in a secret cellar with his son Peter. When Peter killed his father and left the house, the mother pushed the basement away. Smoky now finds a room there where Keith transformed his son into the new Ripper.
A diary reveals the real name of Jack Junior. It's Peter Hillstead, the therapist, who brought Smoky back to the police force so she could become his Abberline . When the FBI team is back in Los Angeles, Hillstead calls and reports that he has Elaina and Bonnie under his control. After Smoky came to him, the situation was the same as with Sands, who was also hired by Hillstead. However, Smoky manages to shoot Hillstead without injuring Bonnie.
characters
- Special Agent Smoky Barrett: protagonist of the story. Smoky Barrett, born in 1968, is five feet tall and is of Irish descent. She is a criminologist and FBI agent who has passed all disciplines of her career with top marks and is considered one of the best shooters in the country. In 1995 their daughter Alexa was born. In her unit she is considered a particularly ruthless and dogged pursuer of serial offenders, to whom she sacrifices almost her entire private life. After the sex offender Joseph Sands breaks into her home, rapes her and disfigured her with a knife, after killing her husband Matt and her daughter Alexa in a particularly gruesome way, her personality changes. She is therefore in psychiatric treatment with Dr. Peter Hillstead.
“ Life is smoke and my name is Smoky. Smoky Barrett. The days when I decide whether to go back to work at the FBI or go home and put a gun in my mouth and blow my brain away. "
Her disfigured face becomes synonymous with her struggle for survival. The manhunt for the serial killer "Jack Junior" turns into a private campaign of revenge and becomes a kind of obsession. She explains her motivation by the fact that she wants to save human lives through constant readiness to investigate murders.
- Callie Thorne: FBI agent on Smoky Barrett's team. Callie is red-haired and is considered attractive. The attributes “ shocking ”, “ blatant ”, “ callous ”, “ incredibly honest ” and “ brutal in their observation ” are assigned to her. After Smoky underwent medical and psychiatric treatment for six months, she took over the management of the CASMIRC team in Los Angeles. Callie is the first to find Smoky after Sand's robbery and save her life.
“ It was Callie who found me after my fight with Joseph Sands. I was naked and bloody and vomit and I screamed and cried. "
- James Giron , called “Damien” after the character from the movie “ The Omen ”, is the third FBI agent on the CASMIRC team. The doctor of criminology is the brilliant nerd of the group who offends a lot of people with his emotive and arrogant manner. He and his boss Smoky have the gift of empathizing with the sick soul world of sex offenders. A process they refer to as the "black train". James had lost his sister to a serial killer who killed her with a welding torch.
- Annie King: Smoky's best friend from school. The former cheerleader lives in San Francisco and runs a private pornographic website there. She becomes the first known victim of “Jack Junior”, who breaks into her house with his friend and sadistically kills her after hours of torture.
“ They are creatures who masturbate while devouring human flesh, who moan ecstatically when they smear themselves with feces and brain matter. "
Their unimaginable sufferings are videotaped and later given to Smoky Barrett on a CD entitled "The Death of Annie". The only survivor of the bloodthirsty carnage is her underage daughter Bonnie, who is taken into care by Smoky.
- Charlotte Ross: the second victim of “Jack Junior” and his henchman. Her death is also extremely cruel. Deep cuts are made in the skin in a procedure that takes hours. Charlotte is raped several times and repeatedly fainted so that she can experience her torments fully conscious. All organs are removed from the woman and neatly stowed in a row in plastic bags. Again, the act is committed with a mixture of passion and frenzy. For the perpetrators, Charlotte is just an “internet prostitute” who, in their opinion, deserves to die as painfully as possible. As with Annie King (Rolling Stones: “Gimme Shelter”), this act is accompanied by loud music (Beach Boys: “California Girls”).
- Joseph Sands: The First Antagonist in History. Character and personality are not described in detail. But he has superhuman features. He only appears when he brutally wipes out Smoky's family and disfigured the FBI agent's face forever with the knife. As the story progresses, he reappears in Smoky's nightmares. Sands is a sadist who feeds on the agony of his victims. He commits his murder in a lizard-like costume (demon suit) and is shot by Smoky.
“ I like to eat souls for my life,” he says to me in a conversational tone. “There's nothing like eating something that was actually meant for heaven. "
- Peter Hillstead aka “ Jack Junior ”: The “Shadow Man ”. The eponymous character of the novel. The attractive man knows how to cast a spell over other people with his distinctive charm. He accompanies Smoky for a while on her psychotherapeutic sessions and wins her trust.
“ His name is Peter Hillstead and looks pretty much the exact opposite of Freud's stereotype. He is about six foot eight, has dark hair, an attractive model face and a body that amazed me the first time we met. Most impressive, however, are its eyes. They are of such a brilliant blue that I have never seen any brunette before. "
Only towards the end of the story, during a visit by the FBI agents to his mother, Patricia Conolly, does his second face reveal himself. It turns out that he is the son of the sociopath Keith Hillstead, who saw himself as the legitimate descendant of the London murderer Jack the Ripper. His wife Patricia, who he had abused, raped and physically abused for several years since their wedding night, only served him as a “birthing machine” to give him a son. Keith raised his son, for a long time without his mother's knowledge, in the seclusion of a locked cellar to be a psychopathic misogynist and sadistic murderer who takes pleasure in the sufferings of his victims. As a guideline for his abnormal upbringing, he used, among other things, the “Ripper's Commandments” recorded on a wall in the cordoned-off basement room, which, as the “bloodline of the hunters”, should give them a feeling of superiority over common people, the “cattle”. It is their duty to kill whores as cruelly as possible in order to cleanse humanity of these "plague bumps".
“ 4. You must not feel guilty when you triumph over the murder of a whore. You are of an ancient lineage and you are a carnivore. Your thirst for blood is something natural. "
Young Peter kills his father when he tries to murder his mother. Then he disappears from her field of vision and begins a bourgeois existence, but without giving up his brutal double life. He succeeds in finding numerous disciples for the exercise of his perverse instincts. Ronnie Barnes and Robert Street become his assistants who carry out the murders together. But his main target is not the prostitutes he kills, but Smoky Barrett, whose lives he wants to destroy completely by killing everything she loves.
Reviews
Jörg Kijanski from krimi-couch.de thinks that the " representation of the individual abuse [...] not only goes to the limit of pain, but clearly beyond it ", which is, however, mitigated by breaks in tempo. “ The plot is exciting, the writing style is absolutely driving despite a few short lengths and the investigators and their surroundings are filled with life with great attention to detail. A high atmosphere guaranteed . "
At academicworld.net, David Sassir praises the writing style, through which "a mental cinema of images [is set in motion for the reader, which gives him the uncanny feeling of being part of what is happening himself" . For him, the novel is “a successful thriller with the right mix of horror, thrills and criminological crime hunt” .
The reviewer at leserschwert.at recognizes a typical “genre ensemble” in the style of the stories about Hannibal Lecter and describes a very high “ tempo [...] that even dries the sweat of fear behind the ears”. He therefore recommends that "this book be kept out of the reach of the weak nerves ."
expenditure
- Cody McFadyen: Shadow Man . Charnwood Books, Leicester 2006, ISBN 1-846-17540-2 .
- Cody McFadyen: The bloodline. Thriller ("Shadow Man"). Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2008, ISBN 978-3-404-15853-9 .
- Cody McFadyen: The bloodline. Audiobook ("Shadow Man"). Lübbe Audio, Bergisch Gladbach 2006, ISBN 978-3-7857-3207-6 (6 CDs; read by Franziska Pigulla ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cody McFadyen: Die Blutlinie, Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2008, ISBN 978-3-404-15853-9 , p. 18
- ^ Cody McFadyen: Die Blutlinie, Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2008, ISBN 978-3-404-15853-9 , pp. 46-47
- ↑ Cody McFadyen: Die Blutlinie, Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2008, ISBN 978-3-404-15853-9 , p. 47
- ↑ Cody McFadyen: Die Blutlinie, Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2008, ISBN 978-3-404-15853-9 , p. 136
- ↑ Cody McFadyen: Die Blutlinie, Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2008, ISBN 978-3-404-15853-9 , p. 35
- ↑ Cody McFadyen: Die Blutlinie, Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2008, ISBN 978-3-404-15853-9 , p. 18
- ↑ Cody McFadyen: Die Blutlinie, Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2008, ISBN 978-3-404-15853-9 , p. 435
- ↑ Cody McFadyen: Die Blutlinie, Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2008, ISBN 978-3-404-15853-9 , p. 435
- ↑ Jörg Kijanski: The bloodline Cody McFadyen. krimi-couch.de, December 2006, accessed on April 9, 2010 .
- ↑ David Sassir: A serial killer sees himself as a direct descendant of Jack The Rippers and lives up to his name. academicworld.net, accessed April 9, 2010 .
- ↑ Psycho-Thrill on wide tires. leserschwert.at, accessed on April 9, 2010 .