Taking Lives - Tapa dura

The author of The Drowning Room presents a chilling psychological portrait of a young serial killer who takes on the identities of his victims after he has killed them in the belief that he can live their lives better than they do. 50,000 first printing. Tour.

sychological novel about a young serial killer who takes on the identities of his victims.

The first one he didn't really have to kill. The yound college-bound kid had been hit by a car. He was almost, if not already dead when Martin Arkenhout smashed his head with a stone.

With this chilling opening scene, Michael Pye begins a brilliantly daring and suspenseful novel about the fragile borders that define who we are and the hidden desire in each of us to reinvent ourselves. When Arkenhout can no longer maintain the identity of his first victim, he takes another. Then another. He thinks he can live their lives better than they do, and he continues the pattern until he happens to choose the wrong victim and his secret begins to unravel.

We are taken from New York to the Bahamas to Amsterdam, and finally to Portugal, where Arkenhout (now living the life of one Professor Christopher Hart) is eventually tracked down by the story's narrator, John Costa, who is in pursu