Book Review: Julie Mae Cohen mixes love, lust and murder in Bad Men

Author Julie Mae Cohen. Pic: Nicole Engelmann

• Bad Men 
• Julie Mae Cohen 
• Zaffre, hb  €20.99 

Julie Mae Cohen may well be onto a winner with Bad Men, a novel about a female serial killer. The heroine, Saffy, reasons ‘someone’s got to kill them…’ and as a triple heiress, she has got the time and the means to do it.

Having offed a couple of women-abusing-men in her native US, Saffy is residing at her mews home in Kensington, London, whilst supporting her recently dumped sister, Susie. She is poised to kill the ex-boyfriend, Finlay, but Susie still loves him, so that project is on the long finger.

Instead of sitting at home tapping her manicured nail on her crystal, Saffy has seen, and fallen in love with, or at least become obsessed by, Jonathan. This individual is the hero of Bad Men and his wan, muscled-geek, good looks, point to the fact that the author writes Romance as Julie Cohen, whilst her thrillers come out with the addition of Mae in her name.

Jonathan has good excuses for loitering palely and alone, like Keats’s knight-at-arms. His lovely wife, Amy, has demanded a divorce having reached the end of her tether. He has abused her by total neglect, being a workaholic whose true-crime podcast and books keep him constantly wfh.

After Amy walks out, underscoring the actuality that the house is hers and he must perforce depart, he finds himself much too close to a murderer and his victims. 

One of the subjects of his broadcasts, a builder who has helped him solve an earlier crime, turns out to be a slayer of rent boys, rather like Stephen Port who, in 2014 and 2015, drugged and assaulted young gay men, leaving their bodies propped up against walls in his neighbourhood.

Shocked by the reality of dismembered corpses, some parts in bin bags on his doorstep, others in a freezer, he abandons his erstwhile home and work, escaping to a leaking croft in Scotland. Here he moulders away until Saffy following him, manufacturers a random meeting.

Bad Men, by Julie Mae Cohen

Rescuing a small dog from a centre, she drops the poor bitch down a well, and prevails upon Jonathan to don his knight-in-shining-armour persona and abseil into the freezing muddy pit. Then she persuades him to adopt the canine (who may have an uncanny resemblance to Cohen’s own ‘terrier of dubious origin’) renamed ‘Girl’.

The police call Jonathan back to London to assist them in their enquiries and both Saffy and his agent, Edith, see this as an opportunity to reconstitute him to his normal self. 

They have different aims, both selfish. Edith wants him to resume his lucrative work and earn money for her business whereas Saffy has sufficient money for everyone; she just wants him to regain his mojo so that he can be her lover.

The plot thickens, as thriller plots do, and Jonathan and Saffy form a forensic team, as they search for evil fire-setting, murdering criminals. A hiatus allows Saffy a sideshow during which she knocks off a vile philanderer, something of a Boris Johnson clone; her exploits just avoid discovery by Jonathan, a man who prides himself on his puzzle-solving.

Because of its light-hearted approach and comedic moments, it seems that Bad Men must have a happy or upbeat ending although, at the same time, homicides have been committed and the perpetrators should pay the price. It is a thrilling journey towards an unknown outcome.

Julie Mae Cohen may have created a winning format, drawing in fans of Romance, True Crime and thrillers: Bad Men may be a ground-breaking as well as best-selling publication.