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 … 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.
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This book starts out with a bang and keeps you hooked the entire way through. There is no need to create a who done it mystery. The plot itself is intriguing enough to maintain reader interest from start to finish. Be warned that the book contains a lot of graphically violent scenes though. Some of them are truly powerful enough to evoke nightmares. Black (Duncan) does an amazing job characterizing a psychopath. While reading, it’s easy to feel as if you are getting a first-hand glimpse into the killer’s psyche. In addition, the female lead detective has some personal issues that interfere with her ability to lead the investigation properly. The commingling stories create an action packed, intense thriller. I always know when I read a good book. If I find myself concerned for the character’s well-being and actually feel a hint of fear for his or her safety, I know the author has done the remarkable and difficult job of making me forget that I am reading a fiction book. The Killing Lessons made me shudder and had me willing the victims to find a way to survive! This is one not to be missed if you’re a fan of the genre.
Holy dark and gritty novel!! I don’t know what I thought I was going to get when I started The Killing Lessons by Saul Black, but I definitely wasn’t expecting it to be so intense. There is so much descriptive violence and gore, and there is NO way you should read it unless you are okay with both of those things. There are a lot of viewpoint changes and a lot of characters as well, but somehow, I mostly kept them all straight and didn’t find myself confused. Even though this series features Valerie Hart as our main character, I didn’t feel like her viewpoint got way more attention than anyone else. Some character’s POVs don’t show up as often and Hart is still definitely the main POV, but I thought Black did a great job of giving the other characters attention, so this wasn’t just a straight-up police procedural. Thanks to all of the viewpoints, as the reader we are omniscient and know everything that is happening so the killer isn’t really a surprise to anyone but Hart our homicide detective. I don’t always love when authors choose to do this, but I thought it worked really well for this book.
I thought the audiobook for The Killing Lessons was very interesting, and it is narrated by Christina Delaine. I chose the word interesting because I can’t really think of a better word to describe it. The way Delaine narrates is almost at a certain tempo, and I am very curious to know if the author or publisher directed her to do this or if that was her interpretation of the writing style. Either way, I was a big fan of it, and it gave the book a different kind of feel than I would have gotten from reading it – in a good way! My first impression of Hart was that she has a lot of guilt from not being able to solve a previous crime and it was doing a lot to her psyche. She grapples with a couple of things throughout the novel and I will be very interested to see where the rest of the series takes us with her character. This is a pretty long book and the audio was a whopping 14 hours and 39 minutes. I think The Killing Lessons dragged a bit at times and other times it was nonstop action, so maybe it could have been whittled down a bit. But for a debut, this was really impressive, and I am IN for every book to come!
This author is a terrific wordsmith. I found myself marveling at some of his descriptions. As for the plot, it’s full of twists and turns, and truly it’s a Silence of the Lambs sort of narrative where pure evil drives the action. Not for the faint of heart. The psychological insight into his characters is stunning. Totally worthwhile…but beware, it’s both hard to walk away from once you start and hard to forget.
This book was fantastic. I plan on rereading it! I couldn’t put it down.
Decent plot lines. I found myself annoyed by the abundance of author observations/pronouncements that he thinks are profound or clever–when they were neither. Just stick to telling the story
I do not often read a book about such depraved and horrific killers but this one grabbed my attention . I could not put this story down what for wondering when and how these 2 sick individuals would be caught .
Great book
One of the best thrillers I’ve ever read! Really well written and great story.
Good read, suspenseful, action packed.
Interesting picture of psychological dependence on the people in our lives.
If you want to ruin a perfectly good weekend with a gut-wrenching, spine-tingling, deeply disturbing, edge-of-the-seat-thrilling crime novel, THE KILLING LESSONS is your ticket. Beware.
“The Killing Lessons” was one of the most well-written thrillers I’ve ever read. Often mystery novels can turn into tawdry reads, sacrificing world building for a cheap thrill, but Black manages to build a terrifying and realistic world the reader can’t escape. There is no doubt this one is psychological (and not for the weak-stomached), but it borders of literary in a way not often seen in the genre. Black’s ability to capture characters was mesmerizing – it reminded me of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” In the song – Cash is able to understand what makes a prisoner fundamentally human – even when facing death, all he wants is a cup of coffee. That intricacy and realism is echoed in every character Black introduces and he wastes no time with unimportant detail. Plus it’s just a hell of a thriller! Can’t wait to read “LoveMurder.”