Equal parts edge-of-your-seat frustrating and adorable - An ARC Review of Kate Posey's Serial Killer Games

I don’t know that I should admit this in mixed company (or any company, really) but I’ve been on a bit of a serial killer romance binge. I’d blame Brynne Weaver’s “Ruinous Love” trilogy but the fascination began a few decades before that. I was obsessed with the late 70s flickTime After Time, in which Jack the Ripper steals HG Wells’s time machine and the OG serial killer runs amok while romance blooms in the background. Did I mention I watched this as a small child and my dad introduced me to this film? How very Wednesday Adams of me. And, oh look, a segue . . . 

Speaking of delightfully morbid Goth girls, one of my favorite characters, Cat, in Kate Posey’s Serial Killer Games - the title, of course, caught my eye when it came across my ARC offerings - is just that: a delightfully morose six year old with the voice of a chain-smoker and fashion sense of a Victorian ghost. Despite the fact that SKG focuses primarily on love interests Jake, an oxymoronic permanent temp who’s either one hell of a serial killer or just another grey-suited cog in soulless corporate Canada’s cement jungle, and Dolores, aka Dodi, who’s either a black widow or vampire moonlighting (daylighting?) as a C-suite wannabe, the minor characters really flesh out their questionable budding romance.

There’s so much to say and yet, though I’ve never met a spoiler I didn’t like, I don’t (and can’t really, because ARCs) want to give too much away. In a nutshell, or, rather, the cold corporate elevator that Jake and Dolores find themselves flung together in, Posey’s protagonists capture each other’s interests almost immediately. Jake, who is “grey rocking” his way through life, attempting to blend into the scenery as the perfect temp, one who’s a bit too observant about his fellow, albeit temporarily so, employees, is just a little too on the nose, what with his same corporate drone suit, thick-rimmed (read: Clark Kent) glasses, and hair parted just so. Dolores, however, notices that there’s something, well, several somethings, off about him, and immediately hones in on the gratuitous gloves he wears at all times. Canadian winters aside (and, believe you me, I know something about that level of cold), the gloves seem less about warmth and more about protection . . . of the wearer, from having their fingerprints left behind. 

The fact that there’s a serial killer on the loose that’s offing finance bros across the downtown area by staging their suicidal jumps from very tall buildings, aptly named the Paper Pusher? Well that’s just the icing on the cake and also what has Dolores’ hackles up. She immediately recognizes Jake for what he is: an imposter. In her mind, there’s no way someone this clever, attractive, and desperately seeking to blend into the scenery can be anything but a serial killer. And her mind would know, in that she’s got her own dark past that Jake can’t help but sense - a beautifully dark spider capable of spinning her web around unwitting men - and also wants to indulge in. In noticing one another and, subsequently, throwing each other a lifeline to avoid being sucked into conversation with Doug, your stereotypical clueless middling manager who has no idea how he got his job or what it really entails, the two engage in their dark fantasies of seeing the other as a potential killer and, in this, kindred soul, and begin their flirtation with the titular serial killer games.

I’ll give it to Posey, I was on my toes throughout the first third of the book and felt off-kilter for much of this reading. In a good way. After their first “date”, in which Jake follows a nearly naked Dolores into his roommate's luxury bathroom - wielding a knife, no less - and she trips on the also nearly naked corpse of a very endowed young woman lying lifeless in the shower, it’s clear that these two share the same killer kink. Little spoiler here, spoilerette if you will, but the corpse turns out to be one of many that Jake has had to dispose of for his egomaniacal, tortured, and rich roommate, Grant. In fact, it’s Jake’s specialization in “removal” that really enamors him of Dolores. The spoiler part of this (and, really, this is still within the first few pages) is that the corpse isn’t dead, as such, but rather a high-end sex doll, one with whom Grant has run the course of his “romantic” relationship with and needs to have out of his sight like yesterday.

The sex doll, one of oh so many, as it turns out, provides fodder for the Best. Date. Ever. Dolores and Jake reenact one of her favorite podcast murders in which a killer mall Santa (it’s the Christmas season, by the by) left the limbs of his corpses as perverse presents all around town. Of course, the magic of their date is fleeting and reality sets in and Dolores pulls away and Jake doesn’t even have an idea how to make a move on the woman with whom he not only shares his unique “interests” but also was, you know, just naked in his shower hours earlier and yet could not seal the deal with, to her chagrin.

Along the course of their relationship, wherein Jake is keeping close tabs on Dolores, who crashes his obligatory birthday dinner with his beloved aunt Laura and her husband, his despised uncle Andrew, who never fails to remind him that he’s not his son and that the now-grown orphan needs to better in every facet of his life. Especially, once Dolores arrives, in the realm of female company, as Andrew’s clutching his pearls at her appearance and general zero-fucks-given demeanor. In fact, it’s after she storms out of the restaurant, clutching a half-drunk bottle of wine like a lifeline, that she and Jake indulge in their passion, in the form of a kiss that is, and she gifts him with a real part of her: Dodi, her nickname. 

And herein lies the rub. How can these two maybe (but probably not, but maybe?) serial killers distinguish reality from their far more vibrant imaginary lives in which they’re not just trying to make it through the day but powerful and, moreover, important to someone else in their own right. And that, when all is said and done, is what makes Serial Killer Games one of the most entertaining (despite a severe lack of smut) books I’ve read in a while. Whirlwind trips to dispose of bodies in Las Vegas and Elvis-ordained marriages aside, the good stuff is what’s at the core of the story: two sad, seemingly boring people who simultaneously want to be ignored and seen at the same time. Jake, as his job suggests, has been temping his way through life - a butler side character who lives to clean up others’ messes and make their lives run more smoothly - for the better part of a decade after he discovers he’s succumbing to the same tragic and terminal illness as his biological father. Dolores, who both is and isn’t the black widow she’s presumed to be, is so intent on sheltering her fragile heart and toeing the line that she too is like the vampire Jake jokes that she is: without substance or reflection.

Ultimately, this book hit my sweet spot: just weird enough (between criminal (also maybe criminal) lawyer Grant and his sex dolls, Cat and her Goth girl eeriness, sweet Aunt Laura, whose favorite game to play is I Spy (A Murder Weapon), and Grandpa Bill, whose convinced Jake has come to kill him and is polite enough to invite him in for tea before he does it), intriguing enough (who’s the real killer here?!), and endearingly romantic enough (Jake and Dolores are long-game couple goals). At the end of the day, it’s a treatise on family, in whatever form that may be, and how a healthy fantasy life can be the key to a healthy and satisfied reality. I’m looking forward to seeing what Kate Posey has in store for me next, even if I'm groaning at the fact that she has me tap-dancing on the knife's edge of trying to figure out what the hell is going on.     

Rating: 4.5 / 5 Dismembered Sex Dolls