Hangman

By: Jack Heath

Narrated by: Christopher Ragland

Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's Summary

An addictive debut thriller starring a FBI consultant with a peculiar taste for crime and punishment....

A boy vanishes on his way home from school. His frantic mother receives a ransom call: pay or else. It’s only hours before the deadline, and the police have no leads. Enter Timothy Blake, an FBI consultant with a knack for solving impossible cases but whose expertise comes at a price. Every time he saves a life, he takes one, trying to satisfy an urge he fears he can only control for so long.

And this time Blake may have met his match. The kidnapper is more cunning and ruthless than any he’s faced before. And he’s been assigned a new partner within the Bureau: a woman linked to the past he’s so desperate to forget. Because he has a secret, one so dark he will do anything to keep it hidden.

For fans of Hannibal and Dexter, Hangman introduces a darkly mesmerizing character whose skill at finding criminals comes from a knowledge that can only be learned firsthand.

©2018 Jack Heath (P)2018 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd

Off kilter kind of mystery...

This book is sure to disgust some and make others want to loose their cookies!!!! Seriously, this is a very different but entertaining book with a completely UNbelievable plot.
The premise of this book is that the FBI has made a deal with Timothy Blake. He is a totally bent character. Timothy has an uncanny ability to solve riddles and find kidnapped children by putting the pieces together like a puzzle. He's able to go to a crime scene and find clues the professional investigators missed. Hasn't finished high school, never went to college, hired as a consultant to the FBI. If he finds the missing child his payment is the body of a death row inmate (after execution). Go ahead , guess what he does with it ...

Ready?

Well, he's kind of like Hannibal Lecter, he eats it.

Anyway, this book is fun and aside from being a cannibal the wicked protagonist also makes his share of mistakes. Lots of false clues for a really twisted story, if you can get past Timothy's choice of meals! He finds the kidnapped child he was supposed to find but something's wrong and it's up to Timothy to figure out what it is.
Christopher Ragland does an excellent job narrating.
I recommend this book for the right listener...
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This is a difficult one for me to rate

I don’t know whether I should give it a good or bad review.
It was written really well, all of the scenes had life in them and the grit was done in such a way that I felt it.
One thing I will say is you will need to suspend a lot of disbelief in order for this book to work for you; at the same time, for certain parts, you have to be grounded in reality. It’s this inconsistency in fantasy and reality that gives me mixed feelings.
Because it was written well, and because I enjoyed the book and the ending (however implosive it was), I decided to rate it as such.
If you enjoy Dexter, you’ll enjoy this. It’s a similar premise but a different execution that it doesn’t feel stolen.

This is not Dexter.

Based on the description, I understand why people would think it is, but it's not Dexter. It's nowhere near Dexter.

Setting that aside...

Years ago I watched an interview with a certain author. They claimed there was a rule when it came to writing main characters- you have to make them only slightly dumber than your average reader. The idea being that the reader should be able to easily follow along, and maybe even come up with the solution to the mysteries in the story around the same time that they are being revealed.

I hate that rule.

Personally, I want my main characters to be smart. I want the world around them to be intelligent. The struggles should feel real and if the main character triumphs, I want it to be because they are really damn clever and persistent.

I hate that rule, but I'm glad I watched the interview, because I can now easily spot when a writer is following it. Ragland is definitely one of those writers. And it's not just his main character. It's the entire plot. His whole world is full of people and situations that are a special sort of clueless.

There is one unintentionally comical scene where FBI agents were unable to follow and capture a suspect that was surrounded by what sounded like half the federal agents in the country plus seal team 6. It was like listening to a description of someone playing peekaboo with a toddler. "Where'd he go! He was there! We can't see him now, he must be gone! Oh well, guess we lost him, boys. Oh wait! There he is! Aw oops. He's gone again. Shucks."

As for the rest of it: yea, cannibal. Lots of descriptions of him chewing on himself and other people. That probably could have been something if written by someone else.

Wish I had passed.

Delicious story that’s not for the squeamish

Overall, a great story with lots of suspenseful twists on the menu. Ok, I get it, the guy’s a cannibal and some of the details were a little hard to swallow. I was worried that I may have bitten off more than I could chew, but it was unexpectedly easy to digest.

Manipulative

It's one thing to read a book in which gross stuff serves a purpose, something meaningful. It's another to read a book that's gross mostly for the sake of shocking the reader. Blake's past is interspersed with the present story about the search for a kidnapped teenager so that the question, "How did he get this way?" should be a driving force. But only if you're interested.

Eye Opener

Eye opener.

Knowing that desecration or mutilation of a corpse, murder and stealing body parts (theft) are against the law and criminal offences, cannibalism is only against the law in Idaho. Which then made me wonder what the heck happened in Idaho to take that extra step. Especially since I live in Idaho.

I liked the ending as well - You don't always get what you want.

A Wild Ride

this story started slow for me but once I grasped the plot and characters I was hooked. I did figure out the ending before it ended but enjoyed the book very much.

Different and weird!

As anti-heroes go, Timothy Blake is kind of likable.
I thought the story was very different, very edgy and very intriguing.
unlike some other reviews, i do not think the main character is anything like Dexter. He is surely not trying to feed his dark passenger by cleaning up bad guys, he's just trying to feed!

Most of the characters are interesting but the narrators attempt at female voices is so terrible that i found it difficult to take them seriously. However, most of the dialog felt authentic and the story is very compelling. The reveal of the main baddie was a bit of a let down, especially when he says why he is doing what he is doing... but, oh! The way Blake escapes his shackles id quite gruesome so it's worth hanging in there through the climax!

i do recommend this book, i just wish they could have found a better narrator.

over hyped

I downloaded after listening to multiple podcast praising this book. I've read the Hannibal and Dexter series and this was predictable, nothing like the series they said Hangman would be like.

Low rent Dexter

It tries to be edgy but it isn't. The story suffers for the attempt to make a grosser Dexter.