Happy Reading

Toni's bookshelf: read

The Godfather of Kathmandu (Sonchai Jitpleecheep, #4)
Ape House
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
Operation Napoleon
Walking Dead
The Sentimentalists
The Heretic Queen
The Midnight House
Cross Fire
Peony in Love
Absurdistan
Nefertiti
Finding Nouf: A Novel
City of Veils: A Novel
First Daughter
A Place of Hiding
Amagansett
Peter Pan


Toni Osborne's favorite books »
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Monday, April 22, 2013

"The Hypnotist", by Lars Kepler

Book 1, in the Joona Linna series

This novel has a special and interesting story and start with a bang with the brutal murder a family stabbed to death in a Stockholm suburb. The only witness is the critically injured teenager son, Josef Ek who survived the attack and fortunately the older sister was not home at the time and escaped the carnage. The novel is quite intense showcasing graphic images on many occasions.

Dragged into solving this horrific crime is the protagonist, Joona Linna, a deeply damaged Detective who suffers from blinding headaches. Since the boy can barely be questioned in the normal way, Linna calls on Dr. Erik Maria Bark, the Hypnonist. Bark, is also a much damaged man terribly addicted to painkillers he simply eats them like candy. He had sworn to never use hypnosis after a tragic event of the past that is still haunting him. He is reluctantly pressured to hypnotize the boy to obtain details that would help solve the murders and protect his sister who may be running out of time. Don’t be surprised the situation soon spirals of control and we are thrown off by red herrings, many few missteps and definitely in the middle of pretty entertaining stuff.

Taking the genre to new heights, this thriller’s provocative theme explores in a very cinematic ways the influence of family bonds and delivers in each of its chapters a heart- stopping turn into a world where the minds is the deadliest of weapons. The plot is very exciting, the dialogue excellent and the characters outstanding. This quality crime fiction IMO is simply fantastic.

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