I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. Amazon First Reads are always hit or miss for me. ( )

Rooker Lindström had been connected with serial killers all his life - his father is one of the most notorious Minnesota serial killers and when Rooker grew up, he became a journalist, specializing in serial killers. Until one day one of them decided to take his son - and Rooker's life collapsed. He left everything behind and moved to Minnesota, to the old crumbling cabin his father left him - and tried to disappear.

Days after the broken man moved to the cabin on Deer Lake, someone started leaving women all over the place - a homage to his father of a sort. Detective Tess Harlow is on thin ice (is there a debut novelist out there these days that does not have their main detective in trouble at the start of their series?) and really needs to find out what is happening - and her path needs to go via Rooker. It does not matter as what - he may be a suspect for most people but he is also well known for getting into the heads of serial killers - and Tess really needs that. Rooker on the other hand is not really interested in returning back to the business of chasing the monsters. Until the murders get even more sinister - not only they emulate his father's but someone knows something about his son's death and killer that they should not have been able to know.

Zacharias is threading a very thin line, allowing the possibility for Rooker to end up either the killer, or an innocent man being targeted for most of the book. The past also emerges - a past he had kept hidden (even from himself) and by the end of the novel, we have a very flawed man with secrets. Somewhere in all that plotting, there is one too many twists - the book needed tightening and editing - especially the middle feels like a draft that still needs to be reconciled with the rest. There are no dangling threads by the end - or none that cannot be sorted out in a sequel.

A decent debut novel - which could have been a lot better - a great premise, good backstory but all of it somewhat marred by a flawed execution. Rooker Lindström is a fascinating character and I will be interested to see a sequel - the last chapters were full of revelations that ask for a continuation. ( )

The execution was flawed, but the concept was interesting. It needed a tad tighter editing, but I liked what the book could have been. ( )