COLLECTING COOPER released today

Today sees the release in New Zealand of Paul Cleave's fifth dark crime thriller, COLLECTING COOPER - a book which has greatly  impressed US and European readers and reviewers in the past few months. Due to a change in international publishers (when Cleave was picked up by a big UK agent and US publisher), and all the to-ing and fro-ing that goes along with such things, this book was released in the United States last year, but not in Cleave's home country.

Now, at last, we have a New Zealand version and release. Here's an official backcover blurb:

"People are disappearing in Christchurch. Cooper Riley, a psychology professor, doesn’t make it to work one day. Emma Green, one of his students, doesn’t make it home. When ex-cop Theodore Tate is released from a four-month prison stin...more From the international bestselling author of Blood Men comes a gripping new thriller that paints a brutally vivid picture of a killer's mind.

People are disappearing in Christchurch. Cooper Riley, a psychology professor, doesn’t make it to work one day. Emma Green, one of his students, doesn’t make it home. When ex-cop Theodore Tate is released from a four-month prison stint, he’s asked by Green’s father to help find Emma. After all, Tate was in jail for nearly killing her in a DUI accident the year before, so he owes him. Big time. What neither of them knows is that a former mental patient is holding people prisoner as part of his growing collection of serial killer souvenirs. Now he has acquired the ultimate collector’s item—an actual killer.

Meanwhile, clues keep pulling Tate back to Grover Hills, the mental institution that closed down three years ago. Very bad things happened there. Those who managed to survive would prefer keeping their memories buried. Tate has no choice but to unearth Grover Hills’ dark past if there is any chance of finding Emma Green and Cooper Riley alive.

For fans of Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island, Thomas Harris’ Silence of the Lambs, and Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter series, Collecting Cooper is another “relentlessly gripping, deliciously twisted, and shot through with a vein of humor that’s as dark as hell” (Mark Billingham) novel by this glimmering new talent in the crime thriller genre."

It is a very, very good crime novel - if you can handle the darker edge of the genre. Exceptional and vivid writing that has real energy and 'voice'. But some of the events may be too much for some readers who prefer their crime fiction of the 'lighter' or softer variety. As I said in a review of the US version for NZLawyer last year:

"Despite the darkness, Cleave is no schlock-meister; the blood and brutality amongst his pages is merely one part of a compelling tale (although it may be too much for some). He even raises important issues such as violence against women, the lack of support for those with mental difficulties, and the public’s fascination with serial killers – but rather than screaming such issues from the rooftops, they’re just woven through a tale that fizzes with ferocity. They’re texture, not message, in an exciting book where characterisation, such as Tate’s stumble vaguely towards some sort of redemption, shines brightest of all."

In a starred review, Publisher's Weekly said of COLLECTING COOPER:

“A pulse-pounding serial killer thriller.... The city of Christchurch becomes a modern equivalent of James Ellroy's Los Angeles of the 1950s, a discordant symphony of violence and human weakness. Cleave tosses in a number of twists that few readers will anticipate, but the book's real power lies in the complexity of its characters, particularly the emotionally tortured Tate.”

You can see Cleave talking about COLLECTING COOPER in this recently released vid below: