This serial killer police procedural is the first in the Robert Hunter series. We follow LAPD detective Hunter and his new partner, Carlos Garcia, as they are called to a gruesome scene where the body of a young woman is found with the skin from her face missing. Upon investigating the scene, they find a double cross carved into the nape of her neck - the signature of a serial killer known as the Crucifix Killer. However, the Crucifix Killer was caught and executed over 2 years ago. Is this a copy cat killer or has the real killer been out there all these years? Whatever the answer, the killer is dropping bodies and taunting Hunter so it will take the detective's best work to unearth the truth.
TW/CW: torture, sexual assault, suicide, kidnapping
Alright, I've been dreading writing this review a little. I was so excited to start the Robert Hunter series as it comes highly recommended by numerous people I follow on bookstagram as well as having incredible ratings on Goodreads. Seriously, each of the 11 books in the series has above a 4-star rating. This first book in the series has a 4.27 average with over 20 thousand ratings. I absolutely love serial killer thrillers and each of the descriptions of the books sound exactly like they could easily be all 5-star reads. However, this first book was ... not good. Now, based on the reviews and discussions I've seen, I'm fully blaming my feelings up to two main factors: 1 - this was Carter's debut novel; 2 - this book was published in 2009. I do think this was a pretty strong introduction to the series as a whole so I will, tentatively, continue on in the series but this did dampen my excitement overall.
My first frustration was, unfortunately, Hunter. I don't think I've ever been so annoyed with a main character before. I didn't hate him, but I was extremely annoyed by him to the point of some major eye rolls. Again, this might be because the character trends in 2009 were different than they are in 2022 but Hunter came across as so incredibly pretentious to me. We have a whole chapter where we get his backstory which is essential information considering he is the protagonist in the series. However, his background chapter really felt like it was setting up some pretty convenient explanations for him to always have the answer (and the explanation was, many times "I read a lot"). Now, I know there are a lot of different characters who fall into a similar sort of archetype - Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds as well as Sherlock Holmes come to mind. However, both of these characters have flaws that even out their character development. Hunter, in comparison, seems to be excellent at everything he has ever tried and also seems to have no real flaws other than having problems sleeping due to nightmares. But even his lack of sleep doesn't seem to have any real-life ramifications because once he gets some coffee in him, he's ready to go. Because of this lack of flaws, Hunter comes across as very one dimensional and he's edging into Mary Sue/Gary Stu territory for me. I really hope we see more of his flaws or insecurities going forward in the series.
I'm reading this series for the first time in 2022 so I'm blaming the 13 year gap for some really odd choices in the narrative. This is a story about a detective and his rookie partner who work in the special serial killer/high profile crimes department for the LAPD. This is a department you get promoted/chosen to be in so while Garcia is new to the team, he has been a detective for a few years so he isn't a 'rookie' in the usual sense of the word. It is in the story that Garcia has been a normal LAPD detective for only 2 years before being chosen to work in this specialized department so he must be a very competent investigator. However, the Garcia we get on page is less of the competent detective I was expecting and more of a stand-in for the reader. He would ask the questions that the readers might have in order for Carter, through Hunter, to explain to the reader about things like how serial killers often take a trophy of some kind from each victim. It comes off now as so heavy handed and makes Garcia sound like an absolute idiot. I have to acknowledge that back in 2009 serial killer stories, I don't think, were nearly as popular as they are today (or, at least, I don't remember them being as popular) so maybe the readers back then would have needed a little more explanation.
The pacing and tension was really not working for me. I think this is a common issue for debut novels, especially debut mystery/thrillers because the pacing for those can be so hard to really dial in. I absolutely loved the pacing and tension in the scenes where Hunter is interacting with the killer and there's often some sort of ticking clock element to those interactions. The book opens with Hunter getting a call from the killer and Hunter rushing out to find his partner in a trap with a literal ticking time bomb attached. That opening was fantastic but it did give me the expectation of this being a lot more of a cat-and-mouse type situation than what we actually got. Also, based on the ending of the book, I think there could have been a lot more calls and threats happening throughout the story that really would have amped up the tension and given the investigation a little kick to get it going again when it lagged. There were so many places where the procedural part of the story just dragged (and I normally love a good, dry, police procedural). And I get that part of the plot is that there is very little evidence to follow up on because the killer is so good at killing. However, the scenes where they would hit these dead ends in the investigation were too long and they weighed down the rest of the narrative. I have the mass market paperback size and it is 423 pages, which for me would normally take 2 days to read (or a solid Saturday reading session). This took me a month to finish because it would feel like such a slog to read through even just a few chapters. This book has a lot of very short chapters - many of them only a page or two long (70 chapters in 423 pages) which did help the pacing. I actually really like short chapters in my mystery/thrillers and I think if this book had longer chapters, it would have been even more of a slog.
The ending reveal and twist was, upon reflection, interesting. However, in the moment I was completely confused. I don't want to spoil anything, so this skit from ProZD is pretty much my exact reaction. On paper, the reveal does tie together some aspects of the plot that were previously not connected and it would have been really neat if both of the separate plot aspects were equally involved with the rest of the story. One half of the reveal was mentioned earlier in the book, so it wasn't completely out of left field, but it was mentioned so early and so off-hand that it wasn't stuck in my mind by the time we got to the end. There was a name drop moment and I could tell from the text that I should know who that name was, but I honestly had no idea so the moment fell very flat. Now, I'm notoriously bad with remembering character names so maybe that name drop reveal would have worked better for a reader with a better memory than mine who can latch on to every single little detail in a book no matter how small. I did appreciate how we got the context for the connection through the villain monologue so I didn't have to go re-read parts of the story but, again, I missed out on that initial shock moment with the reveal.
For me, this book did not work as a standalone story for all the pacing, plotting, and character reasons listed above. However, I think it was more successful when I think about it in terms of the first book in a detective series. Carter laid a lot of groundwork in this book that we will need for the other books in the series in terms of characters and some of the more basic serial killer details. I think we get a really good sense of how this branch of the LAPD works and we do see a little bit of the political pressure when the case starts to drag on too long. I'd expect Carter to really expand on this groundwork in the future books. Carter also has, based on the descriptions of the other books in the series, a really interesting sounding villain in each book which I think is absolutely essential in these types of series. I was so close to DNF-ing this first book and just skipping forward in the series but the killer was so intriguing and I loved the scenes with the phone calls to Hunter so much that it kept me pushing forward. So I'm hoping the killers are just as interesting in the other books in the series and Carter hones his craft a bit to work on the pacing, character, and plotting parts I had issues with.
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