Nikki is not your average prostitute. She has some serious back-up. His name is Jack, but he calls himself The Closer. He “closes” unsolved murder cases by eliminating the murderer.

The Closer isn’t worried about running out of work anytime soon. What he found on his last victim’s computer reveals a network of serial killers and rapists. They’ve formed a sort of club, called the Pack, and you really don’t want to know about their initiation rites. The Closer sets out to eliminate the members of the Pack one by one, ultimately closing in on his real quarry: the head of the Pack, the one calling himself the Patron, the one who savagely murdered Jack’s family. With each “elimination,” he’s getting nearer. With each “elimination,” he becomes more like his victims.

 Jack thinks he has all of the answers. But he can’t answer Nikki’s question: “What’s gonna happen when you finally take him out?” 

And then Jack discovers he doesn’t have all of the answers. As a matter of fact, he hasn’t even been asking all of the proper questions. 

This isn’t a book for the squeamish, but it would be a huge mistake to dismiss it as a script for a Hollywood “slasher” flick. In the first place, the real question isn’t what Jack may do to his next victim, but what Jack is doing to himself. In the second, there’s a far deeper theme here. The Patron considers what he does as an art form, though his medium is pain and suffering. We learn that Jack was once an artist, too. Is he, as the Patron insists, his protégé? Is life serving art or is it the other way around? Ultimately, the reader may start to wonder just what does constitute art. As Jack puts it, “…art is subjective. That’s it. You don’t even need an artist, you just need someone to perceive something as art in order for it to be art.” 

Finally, this is, for the most part, a well-crafted novel. It’s fast paced and very believable. In spite of what Jack and Nikki do, we can’t help but admire their ideals, if not their methods. Don’t take this work strictly at surface value; you’ll be missing a good book.