Title: I Hunt Killers
Author: Barry Lyga
Published April 3rd 2012 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Goodreads summary:
What if the world’s worst serial killer…was your dad?
Jasper (Jazz) Dent is a likable teenager. A charmer, one might say.
But he’s also the son of the world’s most infamous serial killer, and for Dear Old Dad, Take Your Son to Work Day was year-round. Jazz has witnessed crime scenes the way cops wish they could–from the criminal’s point of view.
And now bodies are piling up in Lobo’s Nod.
In an effort to clear his name, Jazz joins the police in a hunt for a new serial killer. But Jazz has a secret–could he be more like his father than anyone knows?
Review:
It has been so very, very long since I read a good old-fashioned serial killer thriller. I used to devour them. I was particularly obsessed with Kay Hooper’s Bishop novels. Happily, when I returned to the genre with Barry Lyga’s I Hunt Killers, I wasn’t disappointed. It offered all the fun of a murder mystery with additional layers.
Everyone’s parents mess them up at least a little, right? In the case of Jasper “Jazz” Dent, his father messed him up a lot. “Dear old Dad” is an infamous serial killer with victims numbering in the triple digits. And if you look at it from either psychological stand-point: nature or nurture, Jazz worries that he’s screwed.
Despite his worries that he’s like his father, Billy Dent, Jazz is too busy worrying about that to actually let it happen, but he’s got this feeling (well, I suppose lack of feeling is a better way of describing it) of dispassion towards an awful lot of people, but fortunately his girlfriend gives “good lessons in being human” and he has a tremendously loyal best friend to hold him to feeling human.
On the actual mystery front, Barry Lyga unfolds it in a way… well, I’m not exactly sure how to describe it without giving it away and spoiling it all for you, but let’s just say that it’s well done.
Overall rating: 4/5. In a novel that is part thriller, part character study, Barry Lyga truly has a winner with I Hunt Killers. I can’t wait to catch up with Jazz again in the future.
