Man, this book was a massive disappointment. I have a strange fascination with stories about serial killers, both real and fictional. I ate up the first two books in Dan Wells previous series, the John Cleaver trilogy--which revolved around a sociopathic teenager who is trying to suppress his murderous tendencies by hunting down an actual serial killer within his hometown. I also love stories with an unreliable narrator and how much more unreliable can we get than a paranoid schizophrenic who can't differentiate between his hallucinations and reality? Needless to say, my expectations going into The Hollow City were pretty high. 
 Michael Shipman is a young man in his early twenties who police find on the side of the road, sitting in his own filth, sink faucets in his pockets and no clear memory as to what happened over the past two weeks. While at the hospital, it becomes apparent to the medical advisers that Michael is suffering from some kind of psychosis. He is paranoid to absurd levels, believing he doctors conspiring with agents as part of the Plan relating to him. They are trying to get at him through technology, through a person's cell phone, through the medical equipment monitoring his heart rate, even though the desk clock. Faceless men are following him, agents of The Plan. Michael is diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic and sent to a psychiatric ward to receive treatment until such a time that he is lucid enough to answer police questions because, during the same time that Michael can' remember, someone known as the Red Line Killer has been exacting a horrific murder spree cutting off people's faces. Rendering them faceless men, if you will. Read more