Murder in Memory

Set in a small town centered less on industry and more on the college located there, Mike Thorne opens Murder in Memory by explicitly stating that the novel takes place in 1983 and reminding the reader that this is before forensics, cellphones, and other modern technology. Located in the deep South, the town of Harper is brought to life and shaped by the characters from many of their own points of view. The local police force scrambles to find the killer after multiple coeds fall to the killer, the first in an even more gruesome manner than the next.

Like most murder mysteries, the author introduces the killer and the first victim perishes in the first few pages. However, this novel is more of a thriller than a traditional murder mystery. The identity of the murderer is fully revealed well before the halfway point of the novel, let alone at the end. After the reveal, the focus changes from a “whodunnit” to a how is this guy going to try to get away with it. Plagued with debilitating headaches, whether a cure will come in time also plays a part. One of my favorite lines is used to describe these migraines: “an octopus spreading its tentacles through his brain.”

Scene descriptions were wonderful, but lengthy. For a small town, an extraordinary amount of people have died within its citizens' lifetimes. More people died in the novel to accidental deaths than to the killer. That is not even counting how many times a character would go to a new place and reminisce about the multiple people that had perished there.

As stated above, the novel is written with alternating points of view for various characters, sometimes changing with the chapter, sometimes changing multiple times within the same chapter. I did not personally care for this structuring because the trend of which character receives this special type of focus gives away much of the remaining suspense that was not already taken by the killer's reveal. In addition, some of the different points of view highlighted the fact there was little to no growth for characters within the novel.

The scenes felt more fleshed out than the characters playing in them. Each one almost fit in a box: unsure detective, wily doctor, timid professor, playboy cop, fat girl, and unfaithful wife. Other than the ones that perish, not much changes. In particular, the way that women are portrayed in the novel frustrated me more than a few times. The only one not obsessed with sex or being in a relationship with a man is the girl too big to apparently be thinking about anything other than food.

There are a handful of errors located in the novel, mostly incorrect commas and a few misspellings. Yet, one glaring error is that one character, Dave Beasley, inexplicably becomes Dave Parker in the latter third of the novel. These issues, in addition to my issues with character emotion (or lack thereof) led me to ultimately give this novel 2 out of 5 stars. I appreciate the intriguing premise that Mike Thorne has offered here, but I think too much was given away too early. I do not recommend this book to children due to the explicit descriptions of murder and rape. If you like unconventional thrillers, or are interested in theoretical psychology, you should enjoy Murder in Memory.