serial killer

Written in Blood by Chris Carter – Book Review

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Written in Blood by Chris Carter – Book Cover

When we started this blog, I was somewhere around book four or five of Chris Carter’s Robert Hunter series. And honestly, I was getting tired of it—the formulaic structure and predictable elements were wearing thin. Then An Evil Mind came along, introducing a villain so unimaginably evil that it changed everything. It reinvigorated the series, giving new life to the detective duo who dive headfirst into the most horrific murders imaginable. But by the time we get to Written in Blood, that energy seems to be fading again.

Crime Series, Written in Blood

Robert Hunter and Carlos Garcia, the seasoned two-man team from LAPD’s Ultra Violent Crimes Unit, have an uncanny knack for running into California’s most deranged criminals. About 99% of them just so happen to be serial killers.

And these aren’t your run-of-the-mill, discreet murderers. No, these guys leave crime scenes so drenched in blood it’s practically dripping from the ceiling. And Chris Carter? He revels in the grotesque details, delivering long, painstakingly detailed descriptions of crime scenes.

That’s really the essence of Chris Carter’s books: sheer, almost unimaginable horror. The kind that makes readers shake their heads in disbelief, thinking, “Dear God, this is awful! I could never do something like this!”

But Written in Blood does something different. Those drawn-out, gore-filled descriptions? They’re almost entirely missing.

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Red Queen by Juan Gómez-Jurado – Book Review

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Red Queen by Juan Gómez-Jurado – Book Cover

Antonia Scott is the smartest person in the world. She’s a member of a special covert police unit designed to crack the most complex criminal cases. Her codename? Red Queen. But for the past three years, Antonia has been in a state of near-hibernation after an attack took away the one person she cared for most in the world…

The Red Queen Is Back in Action

With Red Queen, Juan Gómez-Jurado has broken through the nearly impenetrable barrier of international recognition after publishing numerous books in Spanish. Not an easy feat if you’re not writing in English. To pull it off, you need something truly extraordinary—something that grabs readers’ attention immediately.

And Antonia Scott is precisely that.

The superintelligent yet quirky and eccentric personality commands both your admiration and your sympathy, making her even easier to relate to. (Much like Lisbeth Salander, a.k.a. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.)

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Hunting Evil by Chris Carter – Book Review

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Hunting Evil by Chris Carter – Book Cover

Chris Carter has an uncanny ability to tap into the zeitgeist: his crime novels, which verge on slasher horror, manage to satisfy fans of multiple genres at once. His infinitely detailed descriptions of gruesome crimes fill readers with both a shudder and a morbid curiosity. And just when you think Carter is merely rewriting the same book over and over again, the American author delivers An Evil Mind, a true monument to human depravity. Hunting Evil is the sequel to this work.

Experiments of a serial killer

In the preface to Hunting Evil, Chris Carter himself suggests starting with the preceding novel, a recommendation that’s hard to disagree with. Without the context of the sixth installment (see An Evil Mind) of the Robert Hunter series, this book is far less impactful.

Without this background, as you progress through the pages of Hunting Evil, you might mistakenly believe that Lucien Folter is just another annoying, attention-seeking, and thus particularly irritating, subtype of serial killer—a mere clown, so to speak.

You couldn’t be more wrong. An Evil Mind makes it clear that this elusive human chameleon, who aspires to create an encyclopedia of serial killers, is the devil himself!

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Holly by Stephen King – Book Review

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Holly by Stephen King – Book Cover

Stephen King read a newspaper article about an elderly couple who had committed murder. Everyone considered them to be kind and decent people—until the buried bodies were found in their backyard. “Perfect material for a novel,” thought King. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic was raging worldwide. All that was needed was Holly Gibney, the beloved character from the Mr. Mercedes books who had since become a private detective, and the result is the thrilling and chilling crime novel titled Holly.

Ultra-conservatives, beware!

Why?

Because you’ll get angry right at the beginning of this book.

One of the main threads in Stephen King’s Holly is the coronavirus. Interestingly, and almost inexplicably, anti-vaxxers primarily come from the staunchly right-wing voting demographic worldwide. I’m not entirely sure, but many believe these people are also the ones more susceptible to conspiracy theories.

(For example: The Earth is flat and is carried on the backs of four bristly armadillos.; or the Moon is made entirely of Emmental cheese. Watch out! These theories might seem entirely plausible at first glance, but they are not true!)

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The Last Move by Mary Burton – Book Review

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The Last Move by Mary Burton – Book Cover

Mary Burton is the author of dozens of romance novels. This fact alone might scare off many crime readers from picking up The Last Move. However, if you enjoy living dangerously, go ahead and give it a try.

The Last Move: A Decent Serial Killer Thriller

If you’ve already read a thousand crime novels where some vicious madmen is murdering innocent American citizens, it might be hard to surprise you. Mary Burton doesn’t really manage to do so either. But that’s not necessarily a problem, as it doesn’t seem to be her goal.

There’s a minor hiccup, though: theoretically, the Samaritan is already behind bars, but we’ve seen enough copycats, mentees trained by serial killers, or wrongly convicted criminals. It’s up to Dr. Hayden and Mazur to figure out which category the Samaritan falls into.

Minimal Romance Factor

Naturally, the protagonists have to work together. And here Burton surprises us: neither of them is unbearable, they don’t hate each other, and they don’t immediately want to rip each other’s clothes off. Instead, they work together excellently. Both are smart and dedicated, so it’s no wonder they develop a mutual attraction, right?

No.

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The Silence of the White City by Eva García Sáenz De Urturi – Book Review

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The Silence of the White City by Eva García Sáenz De Urturi – Book Cover

If you’ve read tons of crime novels, you’re well aware that American, British, Scandinavian, etc., detectives work their guts out when there’s a case. They know that as time goes by, it only gets harder to catch a criminal. But what do the Basque cops do in comparison? At least, if we’re going by The Silence of the White City. Well, they just don’t give a good goddamn about the whole thing.

They take it easy over the weekend—even if Spain’s most brutal serial killer in history is massacring half the city. They head to the countryside for a little gardening, plan their upcoming weddings, that sort of thing. Meanwhile, the bodies are piling up like nobody’s business.

Something’s Off with The Silence of the White City

Eva García Sáenz De Urturi’s book feels a bit… off. The foundations are mostly solid, but the quality fluctuates wildly. There’s nothing catastrophically wrong with it, but the constant little irritations keep it from rising above average.

Like what?

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An Evil Mind by Chris Carter – Book Review

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An Evil Mind by Chris Carter – Book Cover

Are All Chris Carter Books the Same?

I decided that An Evil Mind would be the last Chris Carter book I read; never again in my life. I only read this one so I could say goodbye to the series with a good, scathing review. But why? BUT WHY!?

Well, my friend, because every Robert Hunter story is exactly the same.

Victims drop like flies. Each book features increasingly horrific massacres. The detectives analyze, brainstorm, but they never get anywhere.

And in the end, it always turns out that some entirely average criminal has been weaving these elaborate, time-consuming, and ridiculously complicated plans. And it’s always disappointing when the Hunter books reveal that the GREAT MANIPULATOR is nothing more than, say, an ordinary hater, the ex-girlfriend or maybe poor old Aunt Maggie from next door.

Moreover, if Detective Robert Hunter happens to meet a hot woman who’s a perfect match for him, she’s likely to get killed off before Hunter even has a chance to sweep her off her feet.

But then, dammit, it turns out that the sixth installment in the series, An Evil Mind, is an entirely different story!

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The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly – Book Review

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The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly book review

Detective Harry Bosch seems to have accidentally shot the wrong serial killer four years ago, taking out the wrong guy instead of the evil Dollmaker. Now, the broken and grieving family of the accidentally shot serial killer is suing Harry, who was only acting with the best of intentions. And just to make things worse, another victim shows up: The Concrete Blonde. Talk about bad luck…

Twisting Police Investigation… and Courtroom Drama

From here on, Connelly’s novel takes two parallel paths: in one, the grieving family’s lawyer is squeezing Harry’s balls in the courtroom, and in the other, the police investigation into the new victim unfolds.

Michael Connelly, a master of the procedural crime novel (focused on the exact police procedures), is no stranger to thrilling twists, having been a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times for years. Both storylines are exciting and full of unexpected turns. For example, it wasn’t until page 209 that I figured out who the killer was, and Harry, a little behind, figured it out just a few pages later. Unfortunately, we were both wrong…

Harry Bosch is an experienced detective in the Los Angeles Police Department. Crime novel fans (and his furious superiors) know him not only for his peculiar methods but also for his relentless pursuit of justice. The Concrete Blonde adds an extra layer to the tension, as the morally steadfast detective begins to doubt himself. The realism (and, of course, the twists) of the courtroom events are guaranteed by Connelly’s other well-known and excellent series centered on Mickey Haller, who just so happens to be a defense attorney.

Draw the Killer in the Trap!

What slightly dampens the overall picture of The Concrete Blonde are the last 50 pages. (But of course, the ending is always the hardest part to nail in a crime novel.) The way Harry Bosch reaches the killer seems, for some reason, not to flow organically from the investigation.

On the other hand, luring the killer into a trap bears quite a resemblance to the TV show The Mentalist, which, let’s face it, is not exactly known for being the most elegant solution. But aside from that, the Harry Bosch series is still probably the best crime series you can read right now. (Especially after the Jack Reacher (see: Past Tense) and Harry Hole series (see: Knife), to put it mildly, have started to take a nosedive.)

If You Want to Read Great Crime Fiction…

In fact, not just recently but in general: for me, the American author has been an all-time favorite for over 15 years, ever since I accidentally picked up City of Bones. Connelly’s Bosch series truly belongs to that rare group of detective stories that are IMPOSSIBLE to put down.

And The Concrete Blonde even features a lovely romantic subplot carried over from the previous book.
(Harry Bosch seems to attract both complex murder cases and women with the same inevitability—as magnets attract paperclips.)

Rating: 8.5/10

The Concrete Blonde (Harry Bosch #3) by Michael Connelly
448 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2014 by Orion
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You may also like:
Holly by Stephen King
Red Queen by Juan Gómez-Jurado

The Fifth to Die by J.D. Barker – Book Review

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The Fifth to Die (4MK Thriller #2) by J.D. Barker book review

If you were a serial killer, you definitely wouldn’t complicate your life with as many twists and turns as Ansom Bishop, the mysterious villain in The Fifth to Die. You wouldn’t plan such a tight timeline, nor would you keep your schemes so tightly packed with cursed details… Only to end up constantly checking your watch to make sure you’re not falling behind on your own plot.

And all this while, of course, you’re still a fugitive from the previous book’s crimes. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be keeping a diary, only for half the police force and the FBI (who you kindly send it to) to feast on it and gather USEFUL intel to use against you. But, then again, a seasoned serial killer probably knows best…

The Fifth to Die: Overwritten and Overcomplicated

In short, Barker’s book is overloaded with too many complications, too much contrived plotting, and unbelievable precise twists that are calculated down to the last centimeter, thanks to which Bishop, somehow, always stays several steps ahead of his pursuers.

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