Time to review another first time Florida author, Bruce Thomason. His first and only murder mystery, Body Toll, takes place in Jacksonville, FL, and Detective Sergeant Clay Randall hunts for a serial killer. Bruce Thomason has over forty years experience as a police officer, and most recently as the Chief of Police at Jacksonville Beach.
The protagonist is a majorly nasty serial killer. He finds his victims along the beaches of Florida. He preys on the homeless, prostitutes, and sex addicted. He likes to get up close and personal with his victims, and he uses a knife. The author’s police experience shows through in the story making it more believable and authentic.
Thomason includes stories of police department interaction both on and off duty. He brings out the competitiveness and biases that exist on a police force. Especially a smaller force that recruits locally, and officers may have gone to high school together. I can actually visualize the after hours birthday party that gets out of hand, resulting in Randall using a taser gun on another officer.
Body Toll could have been taken from the Florida newspapers. I felt like I was reading true crime rather than a murder mystery. The story includes a sadistic but not infallible protagonist. The crimes stretched from Daytona to Panama City. The murderer is caught through police work, persistence, and luck rather than through forensics. An investigative policeman wrote this book, not someone that works for a crime scene investigative unit.
Bruce G. Smith 12/13/2009