The Butcher: A Novel

"This is a bit different. It’s much darker than the other books, but with a dark humour too. It’s a serial killer novel, not a gentle mystery—it’s very nasty. But it’s written with so much wit, and a kind of taboo-busting verve. I really loved it. It’s about a retired police chief who, 20 years ago, apparently hunted down and killed a serial killer who had been terrorising Seattle. He got all these plaudits, awards, medals. Everyone thinks he was a great hero. Now he’s moving out of his home into a retirement home, and his grandson, who he raised, moves into the house. While doing some work in the garden the grandson finds these crates buried under the lawn—cases of human hands. Severed human hands, still with nail polish on, things like that. He starts to think: Oh my god, what if my granddad was actually the serial killer, shot an innocent man to frame him, then stopped the killing? You find out very early on in the book that, yes, this is actually the case. So it’s not a whodunit, it’s about what happened, and whether he’s going to get away with it. Which to me is really interesting. Much of the book is told through the eyes of this 80-year-old serial killer, who is one of the most horrible characters, an ageing Patrick Bateman—but with more self-awareness. He’s in this retirement home full of sweet old ladies, and he causes absolute havoc. There are some very dodgy sex scenes in this book, which you read thinking: ‘oh my god, I can’t believe this.’ Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . What drives the book is that the grandson’s girlfriend has always believed that her mother was murdered by this same serial killer, but the murder happened two years after the serial killer had apparently been caught. So she’s investigating, and she starts to suspect the old guy. He gets wind of it, and that obviously puts her in great danger. The grandson has divided loyalties, but he’s starting to suspect that his beloved granddad is a psychopath. It’s so deliciously done. You as the reader know what’s going on, kind of, and you want to warn them. And, I should say that I know the writer. Jennifer is so lovely, a mild-mannered person. People say this to me as well: How do you think of this? Where does this dark stuff come from? It shows how crime writers delve into the dark recesses of their imagination to create these books. If you like really, really dark crime fiction with a sense of humour—and if you’re not easily offended, because if you’re easily offended you will hate this book—then you’ll think this is brilliant. It deserves a much bigger audience. Jennifer is becoming a bestselling author now, four or five books in, but this was one of her earlier books and it’s still my favourite."