Review: Sins of the Flesh

by Colleen McCullough (Harper Collins)

Character-wise you may well have to suspend your disbelief, if you decide to plunge into Colleen McCullough’s gory new Carmine Delmonico cop mystery.

Eccentricity is the name of the game and with elements ranging from touches of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest to a slice or two of that gore-fest, Saw, the thriller fan is likely to be more than satisfied with this twisted tale.

Set in the 1960’s in Connecticut, our first character finds himself naked and trapped in a padded room. His only sustenance is water. If this is not enough, he is about to lose his testicles – “Snip, snip! Snip, snip!”

As Sergeant Delia Carstairs and Lieutenant Abe Goldberg start looking into the initial case, thickening the plot are more particularly violent murders, plus a slew of unexplained disappearances, of young women, from the 1950’s.

Seeing as we are back in the 60s, and Carstairs is an ex-Oxford Brit, there is the occasional appealing element of Inspector Morse to the tale. I particularly loved Carstairs fashion statements – “a gauzy outfit of mustard yellow and coral pink” – all female cops should dress thus...

Psychopathic killers abound and just to add a further twist to the plot, suspects range from a internationally renowned doctor doing pioneering work with a former killer (of the psychopathic ilk), to the flamboyant Rha Tanais and Rufus Ingham and Rha’s sister, Ivy Ramsbottom. All of them, eccentrics to the T.

Of course captain Delmonico suddenly returns from a holiday (for these are his stories) to lead the troops into the gory fray.

A compelling, oddly and wryly funny at times, nightmare whodunit, which is never predictable. Not that McCullough is ever predictable, she has a wonderful way with narrative.