The cover of Barry Lyga's I Hunt Killers asks,

"What If The World's Most Notorious Serial Killer . . . Was Your Dad?"

Told from from the mind of the son of said notorious killer, this book's creepy question hooked me from the first page and held me until the end.

Lyga created a complex character, Jasper known as Jazz by family and friends, whom most of us can relate to. Not because he's the son of a serial killer, but because he struggles with memories of his growing up years.

He tries to understand them and to sort through his memories to know himself for who he is, rather than what others may think he is or who his father tried to craft him into becoming.

A haunting question is seared into his mind by his experiences: Are memories dreams or are they real?

A river of images and thoughts and feeling, dirtied and polluted so that no one could drink from it without gagging... Jazz knew killers. Billy [ Jazz's father] had studied the serial killers of the past the way a painter studies the Renaissance masters. He learned from their mistakes. He obsessed over them. And he passed his knowledge down to his son. Lucky Jazz--those were the things he remembered from his childhood.

Jazz wonders about his lineage. Perhaps, he muses, caring for his grandmother whose mind flits randomly from one thought to another in a crazy zig-zag that often coalesced into cruelty causes Jazz to wonder about his relationship with her.