The Killing Lessons
A Novel
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4.1 • 68 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of this exceptional police thriller from Black, the pseudonym of British author Glen Duncan (Hope), two armed men show up at an isolated farmhouse outside Ellinson, Colo., with fatal results for the Cooper family. Soon afterward, a San Francisco woman is found dead, raped and mutilated with a piece of a crystal unicorn inserted in her body. SFPD homicide detective Valerie Hart links this crime and another Bay Area slaying to a string of murders of women in several states across the western U.S., in each of which the killers DNA evidence suggests there are two of them embedded a strange object in the corpse. Meanwhile, Valerie is drinking too much and has a rotten love life while Carla York, the FBI special agent brought in as liaison, dislikes Valerie for unknown reasons and works to discredit her. The appearance of an old boyfriend, fellow cop Nick Blaskovich, whom Valerie dumped three years earlier, complicates matters further. Despite these distractions, persistent Valerie displays a real gift for uncovering and interpreting clues. Readers will hope she returns soon in another nail-biter.
Customer Reviews
Brutal
I couldn’t put it down. It was quick paced most of the time. There were parts that were difficult to read because of the violence but I really enjoyed it.
I give it a 4 cause other parts were a bit slow and some of the style wasn’t my favorite. It seemed like it didn’t flow as well as it could have.
But overall I would recommend this book to those with a strong stomach
The killing lessons
The suspense begins immediately and doesn't let up until the very last page!m. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and right now I'm trying to figure out how to preorder love and murder. Thank you for a great read
Perfect
There's no crazy suspenseful ending. The whole book is suspenseful. It's exactly what I wanted. It was entertaining throughout and easy to read. The book starts from the first sentence not from the 10th chapter after tons of worthless adjectives.