All tagged Serial Killers

A Gripping Prequel to a Frustrating & Excellent Series: Lucky Day by Barry Lyga

A Gripping Prequel to a Frustrating & Excellent Series: Lucky Day by Barry Lyga

Sandra
Books

Imagine blithely driving down the freeway when without warning your car begins shaking, rattling faster and faster; you’re doing your best to remain calm as sweat forms on your forehead and your hands tremble. Then boom, flap, flap, flap. Something’s terribly wrong, control’s barely there and you know the outcome isn’t looking rosy.

(Editor’s Note: That actually happened to Sandra last week.)

That’s akin to my experience at the conclusion of Barry Lyga’s Game, the second in his I Hunt Killers Trilogy. The first, I Hunt Killers, ended with resolution and the knowledge that the sequel was on hand, ready and waiting.

Conversely, Game ended like a blowout on the freeway. 

What in the name of all that’s creepy, frightening and gripping happened with that thrilling, brutally-cliffhangerific book? 

 

Review: I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga

Review: I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga

Sandra
Books

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.

{Review} Twisted by Laura Griffin

Sarah Moon
Books

Oh, Laura Griffin, why can’t I quit you?

For real… you’d think after I went mildly ballistic over the Magical Missing Condom Syndrome in Griffin’s previous novel, Snapped* and wanted to strangle the main character in One Wrong Step (Celie is the worst main character I’ve ever read—I wanted the bad guys to kill her and leave her body in a ditch), I’d be able to make a clean break from Griffin’s books. But, oh no… a new Tracers book magically accidentally landed on my Kindle and I devoured it in a couple of evenings. 

This is my problem: I enjoyed the hell out of Laura Griffin’s Glass Sisters duology (especially the first one, Thread of Fear). Those two books were the perfect formula for awesomesauce brain candy: decently suspenseful but not too stressful, smart/tough women, smart/tough guys, an interesting setting. I also really, really enjoyed the first book in the Tracers series (which is kind of connected to the Glass Sisters series), Untraceable, because one of the main characters is a female computer hacker for good, which is incredibly badass. So, I keep reading Griffin’s books, hoping to recapture that magic.

And, a lot of those elements are there in subsequent books—plus, Griffin’s a pretty good writer.

She’s got a snappy, journalist style and doesn’t get bogged down in procedure or unnecessary details. (Do not bring details and nuance into my brain candy!) Yet, with that said, her novels still seem well-researched—more so than your average CSI episode at least. Trust me on this.

Since I have lost my stomach for a lot of mysteries in the last few years, I’ve tried a lot of the fluffy rom/suspense writers and most of them are just not at all my thing. They tend to be painfully formulatic and beyond ridiculous. (Ridiculous**, I can handle, in fact, I kind of love ridiculous—beyond that… no thanks.) 

Also, I have learned two things about Texas from Laura Griffin’s books:

  1. The state is virtually crawling with serial killers. It’s amazing anyone survives past thirty there.***
  2. The state is also virtually crawling with extremely attractive law enforcement officers.****