"Blood Thirsty" by Marshall Karp

"Blood Thirsty" is one of the best books I've read in a long, long time. I sat down on Sunday, started reading and...literally could not put the book down. I would have read it straight through but I had to take care of pesky little thing like feeding my husband, feeding and walking the dogs and sleeping. This is exactly the kind of book I love.All the action in the book takes place in and around Los Angeles. The story starts out from the bad guys point of view and it's disturbing. A man and woman have just slit the throat of a Hispanic teenager and watched him bleed out and die. The man admits he perfected his technique by slaughtering a couple of pigs. Now both of them are ready....and you know that's not going to be good for someone.Next we switch to the POV of Mike Lomax, an LAPD homicide detective, who narrates most of the book. He and his partner, Terry Biggs are in the process of going to a Hollywood film premier. They've been offered money and a contract by a big producer to tell the story of one of their famous cases. The producer invited them to the premier so they could meet, Barry Gerber, one of the most powerful and most hated men in the movie business. When Barry doesn't show, you just know something bad has happened to him.Yup, he's found dead the next day, stuffed in a garbage bin, naked. Biggs and Lomax are assigned to the case and neither they nor anyone in forensics has ever seen anything like it before. Two days later, the prime suspect, another despised show-business bad boy, is found murdered in the same sadistic manner. In spite of the gruesome nature of the crimes, this is one of the funniest books I've read in a long time. Biggs has opinions, hysterical opinions, about everything and everyone in Hollywood, and is not shy about expressing them. I found myself laughing out loud several times.There are plenty of twists and turns in the books that keep me guessing. Just when you think you know who and why the couple is killing Hollywood insiders, there's another twist and you're left guessing again. I did have one picky - and it's not really a plot spoiler. Toward the end, we find out that a character had his throat cut, but managed to call and leave a message on someones answering machine. Hm, I don't think so. When you're throat is cut, so are your vocal cords and you cannot speak. However, I let that pass because of the overall excellence of the book."Blood Thirsty" is only one is a series of Biggs & Lomax mysteries by Marshall Karp. You can bet I'll be looking for all the others to read. seuss book collection sets cat hat