I Hunt Killers – Barry Lyga

People matter. People are real.

This is the mantra Jasper “Jazz” Francis Dent runs through his head whenever his darker urges get the best of him. A sentiment that completely goes  against what he’s been raised to believe by his dad, Billy Dent, who just-so-happens to be the notorious serial killer known as “The Artist,” “Green Jack,” “Gentle Killer,” and “Hand-in-Glove.” Daddy Dent has so many nicknames because he spent years switching up his M.O. to avoid getting caught by the police as he murdered no less than 123 people…possibly more. As soon as Jazz was old enough to talk, Dent began sharing his killings in great detail with his son – the who’s, the how’s and, with special delight, the why’s - the power of watching a human take his last breath before the light goes out in his eyes. This is all Jazz hears and knows until, at the age of 14, his father is finally caught and subsequently sentenced to life in prison. His arrest leaves Jazz in the custody of his ailing grandmother and alone to face the accusing stares of the people in his small town. Like father, like son…right?

Fast forward two years later when the body of a woman shows up in a field near town – three of her fingers cut off with only the middle finger left behind. Jazz can’t help but feel the mutilated hand is the work of a serial killer, and warns the police chief as much. After he’s politely but firmly told to ‘mind his own business,’ Jazz enlists his best and only friend, Howie, to help do some investigating of their own. After all, who better to profile a potential serial killer than someone like Jazz who studied for years under one of the best? When within days another body shows up and then another – all with missing fingers – the police are forced to acknowledge Jazz might be right. Worse, the pattern of the killings are quite familiar since they appear to be mimicking those of his father’s murders…in their order and style. As the bodies continue to pile up, can Jazz do what it takes to stop this new Impressionist killer…or will he be enticed to join him? A Hannibal Lecter-style visit to dear old dad in prison only heightens the suspense.

If you’re familiar with the book and Showtime series, Dexter, then you know Dexter Morgan is a serial killer who acts on his sociopathic impulses by sticking to a code where he only kills people who actually deserve it – murderers, rapists, and other hardened criminals. Like Dexter, Jazz struggles with the urge to act on what his father has taught him – the urge to kill. With the exception his girlfriend, Connie, and Howie, Jazz doesn’t feel emotionally attached to any humans, and sometimes when people make him angry – like, say, the social worker who believes his grandmother needs full-time medical care which would mean foster care for Jazz – he even imagines killing them…as in taking his fingers, wrapping them around the person’s neck, and watching as the life is slowly squeezed out of them.

This book is dark stuff, y’all. Lyga doesn’t spare the reader the cruelty of Dent’s killings, mostly women and even the family pet(!), and keeps you guessing as to which way Jazz might go. In fact, Jazz has a recurring nightmare about taking a knife and cutting through skin and bone with it himself, which he believes may be his brain’s way of burying a murder he’s already committed...possibly that of his own mother. In other words, put this in the hands of Stephen King, Dexter and/or murder mystery fans with strong stomachs and a taste for truly terrifying horror. I’m one of those freaks, so I dug it.

Like Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter series, I Hunt Killers has been snapped up by Warner Brothers to be made into a tv series. I can certainly see lots of plot possibilities. The book itself ends with a HUGE cliffhanger, and its sequel is projected to come out April 2013. To learn more about Lyga and his other books (Fanboy and Goth Girl, the Archvillian series) visit his website at http://barrylyga.com/ .

Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone – Kat Rosenfield

Earlier this year, John Corley Whaley’s Where Things Come Back won both the William C. Morris debut book award and the Michael Printz Award for Excellence in Y.A. Literature. Not too shabby for a first time novelist, eh? Part of what made the book stand out was the way Whaley told two seemingly different stories – one involving the disappearance of a fifteen year old boy, the other the suicide of a once God-fearing college student who’s lost his faith - that later intersect into a ‘oh, wow’ climax. In Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone, Rosenfield pulls off a similar feat…only, I think, better.

Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone starts off with a bang – well, actually, it starts with two recent high school graduates banging in the back of a pick-up truck. No sooner are they finished, the sweat still on Becca’s body, when James informs Becca, ‘By the way, we’re done. Over.’ Oooo, burn. That same night across town, a college-age girl is bludgeoned and left for dead by the side of an old country road. Her body isn’t discovered until the next morning when a local townsperson comes up on her dead form, actually driving over and crushing a few of her fingers. As you can now see…this isn’t light reading, kiddos.

As in Where Things Come Back, AAiDaG takes place in a small town, and as Rosenfield writes, “In a small town, murder is three-dimensional…[Amelia’s death] blew alongside the flecks of bloodstained dirt, down Country Road 128, and reached town as a howling gale. The chatter was fevered. Frenzied. People came home from the grocery store, from bridge club, from a walk in the park, and massaged jaw joints that were exhausted from gossiping. They stood over fences and talked about the dead girl, the girl with no name, no face, no identification. “

The thing is, this dead girl has a name for the reader – Amelia. After first meeting her in death, Rosenfield takes us back to meet Amelia as she’s finishing her last semester of college. It’s during that last term that she takes part in a school stage production and discovers she really likes acting – even the director agrees, she has true talent. Her boyfriend, Luke, finds it all silly that she would seriously consider abandoning her business degree to try and pursue a career in acting. Besides, he already has plans for them – plans for them to marry and settle down.

Meanwhile, Rosenfield also lets us get to know the story of Becca and James and how they arrived at their messy breakup. The two first get together the summer before their junior year of high school. What starts out as a small hook-up, nothing serious, soon blossoms though Becca and James are on different paths. Most townies are happy enough to graduate, maybe go to the local community college, but for the most part people settle in town where they live out the rest of their days. Becca plans for more. She plans to go away to college, never come back…but then she falls for James. Poor James is dealing with tragedy of his own – the death of his mother to cancer, a death so crippling to him, that he drops out of school and almost out of life except for his ties to Becca. When he breaks up with Becca the night of Amelia’s murder, he thinks he is finally cutting ties with her.

The death of the strange girl quickly consumes the town and even Becca, who wants James back and reconsiders going away to college. But then facts about the girl’s death start to come out, and Becca starts to suspect someone close to her and James. Even James is acting all weirded about the girl’s death, like he might know something. As the accusations and finger-pointing in town start to fly, Rosenfield slowly reveals what really happened the night Amelia met death – and it’s as ugly, gruesome and sad as any death of a promising young person could be.

Rosenfield is an amazing writer who totally gets the nuances of life in a small town right. Morever, she knows how to build suspense to the point you’ll have to remind yourself to breathe. There’s another side story, about the death several years back of a young fifteen –year-old boy visiting town named Brendan, that tore me up about as bad as Amelia’s story. I could see where she was going with his impending death and found myself wanting to just skip to the next chapter to avoid reading such sadness. She is THAT good of a writer.

This book first came on my radar when author John Green (The Fault in Our Stars, Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns) tweeted about its awesomeness. Obviously, the dark themes in this book mean it’s not for everyone. Also, while it is a young adult book, the high school librarian in me sees it more as an adult than young book. There are a couple of explicit (for Y.A.) sex scenes and rough language, but it befits the story. Just sayin’ – consider yourself informed.

Kat Rosenfield not only writes Y.A. books, but she also freelances for MTV’s Hollywood Crush blog. In other words, she’s got what would be one of my dream jobs. ;-)  You can learn more about Rosenfield and read her blogs both at http://hollywoodcrush.mtv.com/author/katrosenfield/  and http://katrosenfield.com/ .

Ripper – Stefan Petrucha

Put away your fangs, vamps. Retract your claws, werewolves. Stop flapping your wings, angels. See a dietician about your bad eating habits, zombies. The original big bad bogeyman is back and ready for a smackdown in your overcrowded Y.A. market – that would be Ripper. Jack the Ripper.  In the past year alone, no less than three Y.A. books have revisited the Ripper murders – first, as a modern update (Maureen Johnson’s excellent, The Name of the Star, which is set to be a series), then as a historical retelling (Amy Carol Reeves’ Ripper), and now as a steampunk reimagining of Ripper loose in 1890s New York City in Stefan Petrucha’s Ripper.

Ripper opens with Saucy Jack seemingly picking up where he left off seven years earlier in Whitechapel (a suburb of London) where he notoriously stabbed and mutilated the bodies of five women (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_the_ripper).  The killings abruptly stopped and the notorious serial killer was never caught, though to this day, numerous theories abound as to his identity. But what if they stopped overseas because Jack packed his knives and moved across the Atlantic? Hmm…

When two socialites end up dead Ripper-style in 1895 New York City, young NYC Police Commissioner Teddy Roosevelt seeks to assure the public that the killer will be caught – and squash the rumor that it’s Jack the Ripper, as letters written in the original Ripper’s handwriting to the newspapers and police would have them to believe. Enter undercover agent Albert Hawking and his 14-year-old orphaned protégé, Carver Young. Hawking has just recently taken Carver under his wing to train the boy to be a part of the New Pinkertons, a secret detective agency bent on using new gadgetry to help solve difficult crimes. The New Pinkertons have studied the original Ripper murders and letters and believe ol’ Jack is indeed alive and well and recreating his murders to impress someone very important to the killer – his son. His son, y’say? What son?! Why it seems none other than young Carver Young is Ripper Jr. - dun dun DUN!!

Before leaving the orphanage with Hawking, Carver manages to sneak into his file and steal a letter his father had sent to him there. Carver can tell from the letter that is father is shady, but little does he know daddy’s the most infamous serial killer on the planet! As the murders continue and tension in the city mounts, Hawking allows the boy to slowly figure things out for himself, so Carver can best decide how to handle the disturbing revelation and help stop his dad.

Told in brief but high action chapters (85 to be exact!), Ripper rips along at a good pace with a fun cast of characters - some real, such as Jack the Ripper, Teddy Roosevelt and his outspoken daughter, Alice, and Sarah Edwards, the crazy cat lady cat killer. Cool gadgets like rudimentary stun guns, one-man elevators, speaking tubes, office periscopes, and electric carriages all make appearances, and Petrucha knows how to keep those plot twists coming – so much so, that I didn’t see the big reveal at the end coming at all…and I’m not completely sure I buy it. That said, it’s a fun enough read and leaves the door open for more adventures for Carver and the New Pinkertons.

You can learn more about the author, book and view the Ripper book trailer at  http://www.petrucha.com/Books/Ripper.htm .