The Asylum Confessions #4 by Jack Steen

 

The Asylum Confessions #4 by Jack Steen - 242 pages

They arrive alive. They always leave dead.
But first, they give me their confessions. My name is Jack Steen, and for those who arrive on my 'death' ward at the Asylum, I'm the last face many will see before they die. I am the night nurse at an Asylum for the Criminally Insane, and most of my patients know me as their Angel of Death. I know them as mass murderers, rapists, and serial killers - among other things. Here's what they come on my floor, they give me their deathbed confession, and I help to make their death less painful. There's a catch, I want the real story, the one they haven't told anyone else. The majority of these killers are expert manipulators. They could be playing their final game with me by messing with my head.
Now, maybe they're messing with yours too.

Inside this book are 5
One thought she gave birth to the antichrist.
One has the nickname of The Candyman - any guesses why?
One grew up in a cult and believes he's the first of a 'pure' race.
Another was part of a secret test by the government, and I've been waiting on his confession for a while! Then there's this kid who loved Halloween and believed in all the rules. I sure hope you didn't break any... WARNING : There is swearing in this book. And some stories might be a trigger for something you have a hard time handling. But, these are the confessions of serial killers, mass murderers, and such, so what do you expect?

 I had heard about this series of books from a reading page I am a part of so I thought I'd give it a try.  I'm not sure what I'd expected, but this book was just ok, but not sure it's worth reading any more in the series.  

Asylum Series by Madeleine Roux

1. Asylum (2013) - 336 pages
2. Sanctum (2014) - 368 pages
3. Catacomb (2015) -  352 pages 
4. Escape From Asylum: An Asylum Prequel (2016) - 368 pages
5. The Asylum Novellas: The Scarlets, The Bone Artists, The Warden (2016) - 352 pages

This dark teen series shares the dark secrets of the Brookline mental institution and the scars it left on multiple generations of staff and residents.  The characters are well drawn and compelling and the horror action filled with ghosts and real life monsters is very creepy.  The use of black and white period photographs to draw the reader into the visuals of the story are quite effective.  I liked the first one so much that I read them all.  Horror fans will enjoy!  

The Other Lady Vanishes by Amanda Quick

The Other Lady Vanishes by Amanda Quick - 340 pages

Adelaide Brockton is working as a tearoom waitress and mixing herbal teas when a pyschic is killed.  She is drawn into the murder investigation along with her neighbor Jake Truett when it appears that a drug her parents researched is involved.  Now Adelaide must determine whether she can trust Jake with her past before it kills her.

This book is a sequel to The Girl Who Knew Too Much in that it contains some of the same secondary characters and is set in the same town.  I think I liked this book more as it was a little more complicated in its cast of villains and how they all fit together. 

The Frozen Dead by Bernard Minier

The Frozen Dead by Bernard Minier - 496 pages

Saint-Martin-de-Comminges is a tiny town high in the French Pyrenees where nothing too exciting ever happens.  Workers at a hydroelectric plant stumble across an elaborately staged corpse that brings in the police and the state investigative units to try and find answers.  The current crime unearths a web of lies from the past that puts everyone in danger from the highest halls of power to the everyday sidewalks of the town.  

I generally like European suspense novels because their tone is usually much more stark and the narrative is very spare compared to American works in the genre.  I'm a firm fan of "show me, don't tell me."  This book was good overall but the action was slow to start and there seemed to be some characters who existed solely to give exposition.  I'm not a fan of switching narrators within a book and the portions of the plot with police Commandant Martin Servaz were definitely much more compelling than that of the psychologist Diane Berg.  The serial killer element with the asylum in the mountains did have a nice Silence of the Lambs / Shining vibe that added an extra layer of creepiness.