Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Colleen Coble's Abomination ~ Reviewed



Abomination by Colleen Coble
• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson (August 7, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595541411
• ISBN-13: 978-1595541413

Abomination opens with a stranger sitting in a car, staring at his wife's photo. As darkness runs off the moonlight, he drives to an isolated spot on a lake. He removes a blanket wrapped body from his car's trunk. Before he hauls the corpse down to the dock, he tucks a partial peanut butter sandwich under her blouse. He enters the co-ordinates into a GPS unit, then dumps the blanket-bound body into a boat. He returns home after her watery burial and unloads the GPS information into a geocaching site. He also leaves a cryptic message: "ABOMINATIONS WILL FIND YOU."


Someone is after her, but she doesn't know why. She's bleeding from a six inch gash to her chest, but can't remember the attack. A small child in the backseat of her car is a stranger to her, as is her own name. Her car quits running and she manages to ditch it into a lake. But she doesn't know where she is or where she's headed. All she knows is, it is bitterly cold, she has a toddler to protect, and a murderer somewhere behind her. She staggers back to the main road, determined to hide from approaching traffic. But her senses are dulled by her weakened state, and a car with a female driver overtakes her on the road.

Bree Matthews is fairly certain the wounded woman next to her is fleeing an abusive relationship. How else to explain her physical appearance, her lack of proper winter clothing, and out in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, with a child in tow? But Bree can't come up with any hard answers, because the woman seems to be suffering from amnesia and has no answers to give. When her passenger refuses to be taken to a hospital, Bree has no choice but to take her to her home to live. But will her memory return before the killer tracks her down?

Colleen Coble's Abomination is a chilling tale of one man's obsession and a serial killer that taunts the authorities by the cryptic clues he leaves. It is also a story of second chances and hope. The ending initially left me off-kilter, but as I turned over the story in my head, the clues that had eluded me finally dropped into place. Abomination is a creepy read that kept me guessing up to the end.


Cheryl Russell
www.unseenworlds.blogspot.com

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