Title: The Kult (Book 1 in the Prosper Snow series)
Author: Shaun Jeffery
Social Media: Facebook and Goodreads
Publisher: Smashwords Edition
Format and Price: eBook at $4.40
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
About The Author:
Shaun Jeffrey was brought up in a house in a cemetery, so it was only natural for his prose to stray towards the dark side when he started writing. He has had five novels published, The Kult, Killers, Evilution, Fangtooth and Deadfall, and one collection of short stories, Voyeurs of Death. He has also had over 40 short stories published in places such as Dark Discoveries and Cemetery Dance. His novel The Kult was optioned for film.
About The Book:
People are predictable. That’s what makes them easy to kill.
Detective Chief Inspector Prosper Snow is in charge of an investigation into a serial killer called The Oracle who turns his victims into macabre works of art. But Prosper harbours a dark secret of his own. He and his old school friends were members of a group called The Kult who made a pact to dish out their own form of vengeance on bullies. Now a member of the group puts their friendship to the test when he makes a far darker request: that they murder someone that raped his wife.
To get away with murder, the friends decide to blame it on The Oracle, but events take a chilling turn when the instigator turns up dead, his body fashioned into a disturbing work of art. Now, one by one, the members of The Kult are being hunted down. Just when Prosper thinks things can’t get any worse, his wife is kidnapped and he knows that if he goes to his colleagues for help, he risks his dark deeds being unearthed. If he doesn’t, he risks losing all that he holds dear.
General Observation:
~Narrative Pacing: the pacing is brilliant, constant tension, the stakes are always high and a lot of people end up dead. It was interesting and engaging. A revenge murder plot is hard to pull off, but Shaun Jeffery just kills it (pun fully intended).
~Characters: Characters were interesting and three-dimensional, and even though the The Oracle’s motivation was sociopathic and completely unjustifiable, The Oracle’s reasoning did make a twisted amount of sense (but then again, if he was unable to rationalize it, he probably wouldn’t be a serial killer in the first place). However, being a Writer I related more to Wolfe than to Prosper Snow.
~Stuffed In The Fridge: `There is one problem I had with The Kult, which is why this novel is a 4 star instead of a 5, there’s only one female police officer named Jill, the readers get to see her P.O.V and she’s one of the first people to figure out something is amiss. Three guesses what happens to her at the end of the novel. I found her death very convenient for the plot, Prosper Snow could easily have used his seniority over to cohere her into agreeing with his statement. Sure Prosper Snow would have earned himself another enemy, a female cop who knows the truth and will stop at nothing to take him down, however that would have been a good sequel hook.
Ambiguous Pieces 