The Killing Lessons
Ratings3
Average rating3.3
15
Ratings3
Average rating3.3
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 corpses - 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 slaughter at the Cooper farmhouse didn't quite go according to plan. There was a survivor, Rowena's 10-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 terrifying than what she's running from.
Featured Series
3 primary booksValerie Hart is a 3-book series with 3 primary works first released in 2015 with contributions by Saul Black.
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Couldn't get into this one. Had to force myself to finish it. Very slow book although the story was good.
The beginning of The Killing Lessons was insanely gripping. I could feel my heart pounding through my chest and I was hyper aware of the tension in my body.
But then Black just dropped the ball. We go to Valerie, the alcoholic, self-destructive, jaded cop who says she murdered love at least 8 times in that first chapter. It drove me nuts. I'm so tired of jaded alcoholic cops. I really am.
But where Saul Black really lost me was when Valerie is driving from San Francisco to Union City and he writes “It was snowing, the pointless sort that wouldn't stick, tiny flakes whisked by skirls of wind.” wtf. It has not snowed in the Bay Area at sea level since I was a year old. I'm 40. We get snow sometimes up in the mountains, up around 4,000 feet, but on the way from SF to Union City. No. Do some research or write about a location you know.
After that everything else kind of fizzled for me. The vendetta between Valerie and FBI agent York was pointless and silly (they're women so it must be about a man, right?!) the strange romance inserted into the story (even after murdering love!) and the eternal tangents of psychobabble that happen throughout the entire book all led to me really just wanting to skip ahead and be done with it. But I didn't. I finished. sigh
