Starred review from November 8, 2021
In Kepler’s stellar eighth Killer Instinct novel (after 2020’s Lazarus), Joona Linna, a detective with Sweden’s National Operations Unit, looks into the case of a woman found hanged in a Stockholm playground. Her killer attached a winch to a jungle gym before slipping a wire noose around her neck. The discovery that the victim is Jenny Lind, who vanished five years earlier when she was a 16-year-old, adds additional mysteries—her whereabouts since her disappearance and why her captor decided to kill her now. Unfortunately, the one witness who may have seen the murder while walking his dog in the middle of the night suffers from memory lapses following an ice-fishing accident in which his daughter died years earlier. Linna comes to believe Lind was murdered by a serial killer, who may have more women in captivity. The ability of Kepler (the pen name of Alexander and Alexandra Ahndoril) to ratchet up the tension en route to a stunning reveal and an eminently fair solution is remarkable. This merits comparisons with the best of Thomas Harris. Agent: Niclas Salomonsson, Salomonsson Agency (Sweden).
June 1, 2022
This twisty, pitch-dark story is the eighth book in the "Killer Instinct" series by Kepler, the pen name of husband and wife team Alexander and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril. Detective Joona Linna is up against an elusive serial killer, who abducts young women and holds them imprisoned in a secluded place. Like every Kepler novel, this one begins with an explosive chapter that often entails graphic descriptions of horrendous violence and brutality, which is not for the faint of heart. The plot is dense with multiple POV narratives that quickens the pace. Yet, it is hard to distinguish and remember which character is speaking. The grisly depictions of torture were deadened by the narrator's voice. VERDICT Read this one instead of listening to it.--Anna Clark
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