Criminal Intentions: Season One, Episode One: The Cardigans

Narrated by Curt Bonnem

For those unfamiliar with Cole McCade’s long-running Criminal Intentions series (and to explain the long-winded title!) the series was conceived as kind of a TV show in book format, with one book the equivalent of one episode in a twelve-thirteen episode season. There are currently two complete seasons and season three – the final one, I believe – is underway. The same two protagonists feature throughout; each book boasts a self-contained mystery, there are overarching elements that run through each season, and the central relationship evolves as the seasons progress. CI:The Cardigans, then, introduces those protagonists – homicide detectives Malcolm Khalaji and Seong-jae Yoon – and marks the start of their working relationship as they investigate the murder of a number of young gay men. This is very much a setting-the-stage book in terms of the characters – they’re very intriguing and I’m eager to find out more – and while there’s little more than a whiff of a potential romance (and it’s barely even that), I do know that it happens eventually and I enjoyed this book enough to be prepared to wait and see how it pans out.

Malcolm and Seong-Jae meet for the first time when Malcolm arrives at the scene of the murder of twenty-one-year-old Darian Park. He’s not pleased when his boss tells him he’s going to be working the case with the new guy – a recent transplant from LAPD – but he can’t refuse, telling himself it’s only temporary, and gets to work. There have been a few murders of young gay men in town recently, but this one is different – Park was strangled using a garrotte and his legs were sawn off six inches above the knee.

The investigation leads the detectives to the deceased’s former boyfriend, Nathan, who, it turns out, had also been the boyfriend of another murder victim, one who was, like Darian, garrotted. But the question is – could he have committed the murders, or is he a potential target? Malcolm’s instincts scream that here’s a troubled kid in need of protection, but two (and then three) dead boyfriends killed the same way make it impossible to rule him out as a suspect.

I don’t want to spoil the plot, which is clever, chilling and fast-paced, and one where I had no clue as to the identity of the villain until the reveal. Mr. McCade does a fantastic job of weaving his various strands together, of keeping the procedural storyline moving forward while also developing the relationship between Malcolm and Seong-Jae. They’re both lone-wolf types, and they’re both keeping secrets; neither wants a partner and they’re wary of each other at first, spending much of the first part of the book taking each other’s measure, but as the story progresses, their initial suspicion begins to turn into admiration and respect as they realise that actually, they can – and do – work very well together.

They’d managed not to kill each other on one case, but this moment of cathartic camaraderie wouldn’t last. Tomorrow Seong-Jae would still be the same uptight, icy bastard, challenging Malcolm at every turn for his particular regulatory flexibility, as mocking in his silences as he was in his blandly sardonic responses.

But goddamn, they were lightning in a bottle when they put their heads together.

There’s a faint spark of something else there, too, and their awareness of one another is really well written. It’s not attraction as such, not yet, and it’s all very low key (so low key in fact that the kiss they share near the end feels a bit out of place!) and I’m HERE for the slow burn. Personality-wise, they’re your typical odd couple; Malcolm is warm and approachable, methodical but not completely averse to bending the rules a little, while Seong-Jae, who doesn’t ‘people’ well, is quiet and reserved to the point of being cold.

Potential listeners should be aware that the story is dark and gritty and the author doesn’t pull his punches when it comes to the descriptions of the victims and body parts. I’d say that the violence and gore described are no worse than you’d find in similar novels, films or TV shows; there’s list of trigger warnings at the beginning of the ebook that you can check using Amazon’s Look Inside feature if you want more details.

Curt Bonnem is another of those new-to-me-but-not narrators; someone I’ve listened to before under another name but didn’t know it until he started speaking! The handful of performances of his I’ve listened to were pretty good and the same is true here; all characters are voiced appropriately and clearly differentiated, and the performance as a whole is expressive and well-nuanced. Mr Bonnem’s voice has a kind of edge to it that is a good fit for this particular genre – he’s also very good at conveying and building tension – and his portrayals of Malcolm and Seong-Jae work really well. He adds a warm, husky note and a sense of world-weariness to Malcolm’s dialogue, and contrasts that with a lower pitch and more formal, somewhat stiff manner for Seong-Jae, bringing their personalities and their burgeoning emotional connection to life.

Full of suspense and dry humour, Criminal Intentions: The Cardigans gets the series off to a running start with a twisty, twisted mystery that will keep you guessing until the end. In Malcolm and Seong-Jae, Cole McCade has created two flawed, complex and captivating characters; the plotting is tight, and the writing is almost incongruously beautiful at times, given the uncompromising nature of the story. At time of writing, books two and three are in production – I don’t know if there are plans to record the entire series, but I definitely plan on listening to however many of them I can get my hands on!

Caz

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Buy Criminal Intentions: Season 1, Episode 1: The Cardigans by Cole McCade on Amazon