THE SCULPTOR by gregory funaro

I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one, but I enjoyed it much more than I expected to.

Unrelated to the idea of psychos, one of the first things that I noticed was that this book seemed to have a lot of romantic elements. I’m not saying that is a bad thing, however, it was somewhat unexpected to have it come across as so heavy handed. Cathy is in the process of getting a divorce from this crappy guy. Markham walks into her life and fulfills this strong, trustworthy, masculine role; in addition, he has a lot of his own emotional baggage due to the murder of his wife. These two are thrown into a situation where they have to work together. In those initial stages we see the awkwardness as they realize their feelings and figure out how to work together. We see the blushing and the crushing. Eventually their relationship moves to the next level. By the end of the novel, they save each other’s lives (I guess in more way than one), and they get married and are happy.

As for the psycho, I noticed the same idea of the killer making a transformation (much like in Red Dragon). In this case, however, it had to do with an awakening. Not only did The Sculptor undergo an awakening where he realized his true purpose, but he wanted to help society undergo an awakening also. The Sculptor thought that “he was put on this planet to save mankind from its own spiritual destruction. And so, just as he himself had awakened from a lifetime of slumber, The Sculptor would see to it that others would awaken as well.” His sculptures, though, were just one part of it. He felt that Cathy was “a genius on par with his own,” and he was going to use her to “become is mouthpiece – the vehicle through which he would get his message out to the world.” This created an interesting situation in the book because it all started to feel like this weird game. The Sculptor was using Cathy’s book as inspiration for his crimes. The detectives were using Cathy’s book to try to figure out the crimes. And the whole time The Sculptor is trying to plan and organize things in just the right way so that his message is transmitted correctly.

I am not sure how I feel about the ending of this novel. I liked that Cathy gets to take a major role in bringing down The Sculptor. However, I still have a few issues. Markham is taken out of the way as soon as they get to the house, only to come to the rescue at exactly the right moment later, when Cathy would otherwise have been doomed. She does shove The Sculptor into the tub of acetone and snaps one of the locks into place – that was fine. Then a fire starts, The Sculptor is burning, and there is a pretty decent explosion. But The Sculptor’s body can’t be found, which is rationalized with information about chemical fires and explosions. And by the very end there is another murder and it sounds like The Sculptor is at work again. It almost seems too easy. It kind of felt like other goofy cliffhangers where you think the monster/murderer/whatever is dead and then in the last few seconds, you realize it’s not dead. For such a neat idea with the sculptures and the art history aspects, I kind of expected a more interesting ending.