"A rash of grisly serial murders plagued Seattle
until the infamous "Beacon Hill Butcher" was finally hunted down and
killed by police chief Edward Shank in 1985. Now, some thirty years
later, Shank, retired and widowed, is giving up his large rambling
Victorian house to his grandson Matt, whom he helped raise.
Settling
back into his childhood home and doing some renovations in the backyard
to make the house feel like his own, Matt, a young up-and-coming chef
and restaurateur, stumbles upon a locked crate he’s never seen before.
Curious, he picks the padlock and makes a discovery so gruesome it will
forever haunt him… Faced with this deep dark family secret, Matt must
decide whether to keep what he knows buried in the past, go to the
police, or take matters into his own hands.
Meanwhile Matt’s
girlfriend, Sam, has always suspected that her mother was murdered by
the Beacon Hill Butcher—two years after the supposed Butcher was gunned
down. As she pursues leads that will prove her right, Sam heads right
into the path of Matt’s terrible secret."
This was exactly the type of thriller I was looking for - jump right into the meat of the story and with a pace that never really slowed down. I've seen some reviews mention that they felt the book was mis-marketed as a mystery and they were disappointed. This book was originally published in 2014 so maybe the publisher has changed the description from what it was, but I felt like the above description (which is what shows as of today in Goodreads) is accurate and pays off on the premise. I agree that this isn't really a mystery of who but rather a thriller of when all these plot points will come together and I really enjoy that sort of set up to a thriller.
I enjoyed the character set-ups that we got and all of the characters were wonderfully realistic and flawed. Hillier gives the reader a good look of the 'before' state with these characters before the plot kicked in. I did find myself, in the middle of the book, wanting more emotional stakes from the characters. It kept feeling like we were building up to some emotional moment but then the character would either talk themselves down or another character would talk them down. I wanted a bit more mess and a bit more angst than what we ended up getting.
I went back and forth on whether or not I would classify this as a horror book and while I eventually decided not to, it certainly has some horrific elements. We do get some on-page murder as well as descriptions of past crimes and these are pretty gruesome. The Butcher is an apt name for the acts done to the victims in this read. I would categorize this as more graphic than most standard thrillers, but I've certainly read more graphic ones at the same time. I kept coming back to the comparison of Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter and while I do think Pretty Girls is more graphic, I think these two reads are in the same neighborhood and have a lot of the same sinister vibes.
Most of the thrilling elements in this read come from the reader knowing more than the characters. There were multiple instances of Character A not knowing they were in danger but the reader knew and I was on the edge of my seat reading to see if this would be the time that Character A finally realized what was going on. Hillier always managed to keep enough tension in the scene or in the preceding scenes for the reader to never quite feel that the characters were safe. This is a multi-POV read so I knew in the back of my head that something could happen to one of the main characters and the story could still continue on so no one was ever really safe.
Overall, this was a really great read and had a lot of things I look for in a thriller. We had a great premise, good payoff, and good stakes.
