Faces of Fear by John Saul (2008)
This was John Saul's 30th, and penultimate, novel published under his own name. (The count can be questioned. His publisher claims this was his 35th novel, but they are counting the six separately published novellas that comprised The Blackstone Chronicles, while omitting the published version that contained the novellas; Wikipedia gives his count as 37 novels, but they are including all six novellas, as well as the published full version; he had previously published some ten books under unknown pseudonyms. Whichever count you go by, Saul has racked up millions of sales over a period of thirty-three years, making him one of the best selling horror authors of the past half century.
Not unsurprisingly, Faces of Fear is another of Saul's trademarked children in danger stories. Somewhat surprisingly, the book is not one of supernatural horror, but a serial killer novel with a hint of the mad scientist theme.
Alison Shaw is just a few months shy of her sixteenth birthday, an only child, not considered pretty by most and stuck with an adolescent's body, with small breasts and little chance for them to get larger. Not that that bothers Alison. She is content with her life, her studies, and her athletic abilities. Her life comes crashing down when her father, a local television news executive, announces that he is leaving his wife for another man. Although Alison's mother is devastated, she and Alison slowly come around to accepting what has happened. Risa, the mother, eventually remains best friends with her ex-husband, as well as his lover, leaving Risa to move on with her life.
Conrad Dunn is universally accepted as the best plastic surgeon in the country, able to perform miracles with his scalpel, and donating much of his time to charity for birth defect and accident victims. His wife, Margot, was one of his greatest successes. Originally a good-looking woman, Conrad's skills turned her into the perfect woman and a top fashion model, acclaimed around the world. Then she fell of their yacht when it was hit by a large wave and the boat's propellor severely scarred the right side of her face. Margot considered her new look to be hideous and Conrad had not yet repaired the damage. Margot's despondency became so extreme that she jumped off a cliff and smashed what was left of her face on the rocks below.
A year after Margot's death, Conrad and Risa married and Risa and Alison moved from Santa Monica to a rich enclave in Burbank, where Alison would start school at a posh and trendy academy. Her new classmates were all rich and all appeared to already have had plastic surgery -- often breast implants -- courtesy of Conrad. Alison was beginning to feel inadequate with her small breasts and Risa and Conrad suggested that he give her new breasts for her sixteenth birthday -- nothing odd about that, nosirree.
In the meantime, there is a serial killer on the loose, attacking young (and youngish) women, eviscerating them, taking their adrenal and thyroid glands, as well as a portion of their face -- ears, eyebrows, lips, nose, et cetera. Ambitious reporter Tina Wong, who worked for Alison's father, has stumbled on a pattern to the killings and had uncovered similar killings in distant cities some fifteen years before, and has worked on the story for over a year, hoping this would lead to her big break with the networks.
Here's the spoiler, but it's not a very big one since it had been telegraphed in large capital letters throughout the novel: Conrad Dunn is an insane megalomaniac, obsessed with his dead wife and the "perfect" person he had made her into with his scalpel and his skills. He wants recreate his dead wife but there's a problem. Margot was made perfect because she had the rare bone structure to her skull that would allow it. He had never come a cross a similar bone structure until he met Alison, who was to become his step-daughter. No one realized then when he gave Alison her augmented breasts that they were identical to the breasts that Margot had had. Conrad had blackmailed a former patient to harvest specific body parts from specific women -- each part identical to that which Margot had had. He was going to recreate his wife -- his ultimate achievement -- with Alison. He had even given Alison's her breast implants in order to get her to trust him; those implants would soon go because they were artificial (ptah!) to be replaced by real breasts harvested from one of his victims.
The book boils down to a deadly race against time to save Alison. The plot is ludicrous from any common sense point of view, with holes large enough to drive a semi-tractor trailer through it, but somehow it works. It is far-fetched enough that the abattoir nature of the novel, the stereotypical view of the ultra-rich and their offspring, and the hints of pedophilia -- augmented by a major plot twist -- can be minimized in a rush to turn the pages.
Uncomfortably effective.
