FFB - The Angel Maker

Ridley Pearson’s 1993 shocker, the second of his Lou Boldt outings, makes grim reading.

 

Police Psychologist Daphne Matthews works with teenage runaways on the streets of Seattle. She uncovers a disturbing trail of mutilation among the young women in the centre: some are missing internal organs but have no memory of the event or knowledge of the loss…

Teaming up with sergeant Boldt, she begins a race against time to find the insane butcher who was set on harvesting a human heart for transplant surgery. The victim is Daphne’s friend, Sharon. The insane Angel Maker is Elden Tegg, a veterinary surgeon and he is out to make this one last harvest, to rake in the big money so he can retire in South America.

An exciting un-put-downable detailed and well researched thriller with believable characters.

Pearson has written over two dozen thrillers and has been on the NYT best sellers list more than once, yet for some reason he’s never become ‘big’, which is a shame, as he delivers edge-of-seat visceral books.

The subject of organ harvesting wasn’t even new in 1993. What Cops Know by Connie Fletcher (1990) ends with ‘Ten, twenty years from now… the big thing that organized crime will get into will be the selling of body parts. They’re already doing it in some countries – taking these kids, buying babies, killing them, and selling their organs for transplants… They’ll take the kids, whatever ages they want, and just grow them like cattle. And when somebody needs an organ or a group of organs, from a three-year-old, an eight-year-old, a female, whatever… Organ farming is expected to be the next wave after drugs. Doesn’t that scare you?’

 

The main plot in my novella Silenced in Darkness (1995) is organ harvesting.

Today, the mission statement for the newly formed National Crime Agency of the UK is to combat international organized crime, including illegal organ harvesting…