Jeff Mitchum finally seems to have his life just where he wants it. A lottery winner with a guaranteed $80,000 a year income for the next two decades, he quit his job as an undercover cop to pursues his passion for movies by running a video rental store. His girlfriend Jesse is a model and actress, which takes her on the road for much of the week, but gives her enough funds to remain independent. He's planning to pop the big question before long, and he's pretty sure she'll say yes.
Mitchum's luck hasn't always been this good though. Not long ago, his ex-wife was found murdered, an ice pick driven straight through her ear. The perpetrator was never caught; the police chalked it up to a burglary gone wrong, and Mitchum left the life of a police officer behind.
Now it seems Mitchum's bad luck with women has caught up with him again. A single act of infidelity with one of his customers sets off a chain-reaction of horror as he wakes up in bed beside his pretty one-night stand to find she's been murdered in the same way as his ex-wife, a wood-handled ice pick jutting from her ear. Mitchum knows he needs to go to the cops, especially since he has video evidence he isn't the killer, but doing so will open up a can of worms he doesn't want to face, especially because he knows it will break Jesse's heart to learn of his infidelity.
Then things get stranger. The dead woman's body disappears. The crime scene is scrubbed clean. The dead woman's daughter is strangely obsessed with him. Someone sets fire to his video store. Somebody is extremely pissed off at Jeff Mitchum, and if he doesn't figure out who and why, this could very well be his last picture show.
Captured is Michael Serrian's first novel and, while it shows (especially with Serrian's love for USING ALL CAPITAL LETTERS on just about EVERY OTHER PAGE either when people are SHOUTING or just for EMPHASIS!), it's also a damn entertaining little thriller. But what originally attracted me to the book is the art design on the cover: the book is set up to look exactly like a VHS tape, from both the front and the back:
I love it when a publisher manages to keep the same motif across both covers, and Critic's Choice did an excellent job. I've never seen a mass-market paperback quite like it, and it certainly did the job as far as getting me interested in reading the thing. There's no cover artist or designer credited, but whoever you are, you get top marks in my book.
Back to the narrative, Serrian gets points for keeping things short and sweet. With 272 pages, he doesn't have time to muck around with a bunch of side-plots, so he mostly keeps the gas pedal pressed down just enough to go fast but not fast enough that he loses control. There are a couple of nice twists and turns here, and although I figured out one of them before the big reveal at the end, I still applaud him for working it in so well. If you aren't paying attention, it'll hit you in the face for sure.
Since Mitchum's an ex-cop, the story is less concerned with police procedural and more about one guy trying to find out who wants to mess up his life so badly, and for what reasons, and I'm totally fine with that. There's a little bit of violence, a little bit of sex, and Serrian is maybe a little too obsessive about repeatedly depicting a fifteen year old girl in her birthday suit, but nothing here is any more rough than a late-night 90's made-for-TV thriller you could have caught on cable twenty-five years ago.
All in all, this is a solid three-star freshman effort from Serrian, who uses his Brooklyn upbringing to get the New York details right and his English Lit degree to craft a competent story. I'm not opposed to reading more of his work in the future, and I'm genuinely curious to see how he improved as a writer over the years.
This sure sounds like something that I would like to read!
Up till this point in your post, I actually thought I was reading a movie review hahaha!
Keep up the good work, buddy :<)
Thanks, my dude! If you do decide you want to read it, it shouldn't be very expensive. Looks like it was reprinted in 2010, so copies are easy to find. Heck, even if you want the one that looks like the VHS tape like I have, they're about $3 on Amazon. I sell or pass on a lot of the books I read if I doubt I'll read them a second time, but the cover design on this one is so unique, I'm going to hold on to it. :)
Cheers for the heads up. I will keep that in mind.
I must say though, that living in Portugal/ Europe, in a rural area, I hardly use Amazon ( aside from Spotify and the occasional E-book for my Kindle ).
In all honesty, getting stuff delivered here is kind of a hassle and getting something delivered from The States that isn't digital is naturally pretty expensive ;<)
See you around!
Yeah, I don't think there's an ebook version available (at least I haven't found one). International shipping is a bitch, so I totally get it. :)
Same like you, at first it sounded like a movie review ! 🤣 until it's posted on hive book club.
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