My Review of The Alphabet Murders by Lars Schutz

What an intriguing premise Lars Schutz has come up with for The Alphabet Murders: the idea of a psychopath who murders in quick succession... How do you stop them until you can understand them? How can you do that with so many murders coming so thick and fast? How do you get chance to understand them when the killer strikes close to home? These are questions that behavioural investigative advisor Jan Grall, ably assisted by his fellow profiler Rabea Wyler, must tackle. The reader gets whizzed along on this roller coaster journey as Jan returns to his childhood home and is forced to revisit a painful past in Westerland, Germany during the freezing winter months.

The reader is tipped straight into the action as a teacher called Tugba is being tortured. We are then moved straight to the scene of a body being found and realise the significance of the title: The Alphabet Murders as the victim is found with a letter A tattooed on them, before Jan can even blink yet another body is found and the chase is on. Jan and Rabea are caught in the maelstrom of events and Schutz expertly describes their confusion and inability to process one murder and analyse the killer as before they've finished processing one murder another is discovered.

There is a subtext of family secrets and shame in this novel that gives it depth and drives the narrative forward that I particularly enjoyed. It's a cogent reminder that the past can haunt us and have a devastating impact on the present, we are all a sum of our past. In a similar way I also liked the way that Schutz highlights that you can run a way from your painful past but you can't hide from it, unbeknownst to you or not the shadow of it is always with you. Read The Alphabet Murders and see what I mean!

An outstanding debut thriller from Lars Schutz and I'm already eager to see what Jan's next case is.

Thanks to Tracy Fenton for inviting me to be part of the blog tour.