The Killing Lessons by Saul Black Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“All fear was, in the end, fear of death. Once you knew you were dying, there was nothing left fear. It gave you the last great gift, infinite courage.”- The Killing Lessons, Saul Black

When the two strangers turn up at Rowena Cooper's isolated Colorado farmhouse, she knows instantly that it's the end of everything. For the two haunted and driven men, on the other hand, it's just another stop on a long and bloody journey. And they still have many miles to go, and victims to sacrifice, before their work is done.

For San Francisco homicide detective Valerie Hart, their trail of victims--women abducted, tortured and left with a seemingly random series of objects inside them--has brought her from obsession to the edge of physical and psychological destruction. And she's losing hope of making a breakthrough before that happens.

But the murders at the Cooper farmhouse didn't quite go according to plan. There was a survivor, Rowena's ten-year-old daughter Nell, who now holds the key to the killings. Injured, half-frozen, terrified, Nell has only one place to go. And that place could be even more dangerous than what she's running from.

In this extraordinary, pulse-pounding debut, Saul Black takes us deep into the mind of a psychopath, and into the troubled heart of the woman determined to stop him.

I'm a horrible flyer. I say this a lot because it needs to be said a lot. So, when I fly I look for the book that's the most likely to take my mind off the fact that any minute now, I could be spiraling down towards my demise. I like books that are quick, bloody reads. So on my trip to New Orleans, I was sure I packed as many violent books as possible to keep my mind occupied on the four (4!) flights I had to take there and back (damn you, Newark, for not having any express flights!). 

Enter The Killing Lessons. The reviews, all by popular thriller writers, some I've read and some I haven't, were all pretty gruesome so I was looking forward to it. And my first impressions were positive. The writing was good, the book opened in a suitably bloody way, I liked the crime elements, so far, so good.

I did really end up liking pretty much all the characters, though none of them really came real to me. I think Saul Black definitely is a remarkably talented writer, especially for his debut novel. The scenes he set up were wonderful, and he knew not to skimp on violence and gore that should be in a novel called The Killing Lessons. In a lot of respects, this is what I wished The Roses of May was more like. An interesting villain, though perhaps one with a cliche past, a good female detective to follow around, one who didn't do much moping around about sexism, and a fascinating case to follow. 

Despite all these positive things, this book isn't flawless, although because he's a debut author I feel inclined to blame most of the problems with the book on his debutness. Not the writing necessarily, because the writing was both good and consistent, but the plot had some things that I wasn't too keen on. For instance, I think there was too much focus on sex. While a scene or two here or there is okay, it was a constant presence in the book to the point where it became distracting and honestly felt unnecessary. A lot was also centered around the personal life- mostly love life- of Hart, and I just couldn't bring myself to care enough. And I do think Black had a lot going on in his brain when writing this and it took me a while to figure out how he was going to weave these two very different plot lines together- or rather, how he was going to weave them together successfully.

Which brings me nicely to my next point. The pacing of this novel wasn't the best I ever saw. It dragged horribly in the middle, with Hart and Blasko's endless backstory, the main villain being sick (this was the kind of decision that debut thriller authors usually make in order to buy their victim some time to make the escape you knew they were going to make. I hate hate hate that decision), and the pages of nothing Nell and the old man were getting up to. But towards the end it picked back up, we saw lots of action, and I did end up liking how Black was able to pull it together.

I can see Black shining someday in the crime thriller genre, turning out twisted and complex Valerie Hart thrillers, and I'd be happy about it too. While it's true he's not on the same level as Tana French, I'd still definitely be interested in where he goes next. He's a thriller writer to watch. I'm already looking forward to whenever I can get my hands on Lovemurder.

8 out of 10