Top Ten Author:Ryne Douglas Pearson An artful criminal is hell-bent on killing his way to the top of the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted List, in this electrifying tale of madness and murder. — Ryne Douglas Pearson has been praised for his "aerodynamic prose and superb pacing" (Publishers Weekly) and as a craftsman of "excellent entertainment" (Booklist). In Top Ten, he turns his talent ... more »to a story as frightening as any tale from James Patterson or Thomas Harris.
Michelangelo is an unusual killer: a madman tortured by a painful past and a man who believes he is an artist. After he strikes at a small-town post office in upstate New York, the FBI, frantic to discover something about his motives, assigns Ariel Grace to the task force. As Ariel watches the video of Michelangelo at work, she believes she has found the logic behind his rage: his all-consuming shame at his number-ten position on the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted List.
Infuriated, Michelangelo begins killing off the criminals who rank above him, completely unaware that number five, Mills DeVane, is in fact a deep undercover FBI agent on another case. A furious game of cat-and-mouse ensues, pitting Michelangelo, DeVane, and Ariel against one another. And Ariel knows DeVane is a dead man if she doesn't reach him before Michelangelo does.« less
The tale of a serial killer who is upset at his meager tenth place on the FBI's most wanted list taking action to improve his position is intriguing. The problem is that he is better at finding these people than the FBI. He does use unorthodox methods that the FBI can't to find these people.
Overall it was a quick, entertaining summer read. Nothing to deep or thought provoking.
Not a book for the squeemish, ie. very graphic scenes. This has one of the most brutal, messed up villians in it that I've read in a book in a long time. A fast paced book that'll leave you reading into the early morning hours!