Blood of Others is the latest gory thriller by Ottawa-based journalist Rick Mofina, who broke into the mystery/crime genre a few years ago with the bestseller If Angels Fall. His first two taut, intelligently written thrillers educated readers about the psychology of kidnapping. In Blood of Others, Mofina graduates to serial killers.

Fans of the genre will find everything they’re looking for here: a narrative tone that is as cold, efficient, and factual as Scully talking into her tape recorder on The X-Files; a weary detective who is a familiar character from Mofina’s previous books; a desperate journalist torn between his desire for getting the story and love for his family; and a cyberstalker who likes to carve up women’s faces and pose them in shop windows and museums.

Sometimes this familiarity works against Mofina. For instance, it is just too convenient that the detective’s love interest becomes the serial killer’s next target. Parts of the novel are so full of unlikely yet predictable coincidences that it occasionally reads like one long screenplay treatment.

But Mofina’s look into the mind of the contemporary lonely spinster – the single woman with the ticking biological clock who spends her evenings at home surfing the net looking for a life-partner – is insightful and frightening. His killer, meanwhile, is a misogynist looking for forgiveness from the alcoholic mother who abused him as child. Mofina’s killer is not just scarred emotionally; his face is scarred by hideous burns. Details like these occasionally push his characterizations toward the land of corny cartoon sketches.

Blood of Others is a riveting read for thriller fans and those who can appreciate Mofina’s psychological touch, which, like horror novelist Stephen King, gives us a scary ride inside the carnival of a madman’s mind and those of his victims.