Saul Black

In their isolated country house, a mother and her two children prepare to wait out a blinding snowstorm. Two violent predators walk through the door. Nothing will ever be the same.

A Novel

The Killing Lessons

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 corpses - 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 slaughter at the Cooper farmhouse didn't quite go according to plan. There was a survivor, Rowena's 10-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 terrifying than what she's running from.

Venessa Johnstone

Laura

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. 

Continue reading this review on my blog here: https://bookwormbasics.blogspot.com/2...

The Killing Lessons A Novel

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