In for the Kill

By: John Lutz

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 13 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

Frank Quinn, the relentless detective who made his debut in John Lutz’s acclaimed thriller Darker Than Night, faces his toughest - and most personal - case yet...

An invitation written in blood...A madman is stalking women in the city. By the time his victims are found, they’ve been dismembered with careful precision, their limbs stacked into a gruesome pyramid and completely cleansed of every last drop of blood.

To catch a killer - or die next....

Accustomed to working on the most grisly homicides, detective Frank Quinn’s nerves don’t rattle easily. But when the last names of the killer’s victims spell out “Q-u-i-n-n,” the veteran cop feels a chill run down his spine. Then a fresh victim is linked to the one woman Quinn can’t stop desiring. Hunting down killers is what Quinn does best. But this time, Quinn is up against a psychopath that will test him as never before....

©2007 John Lutz (P)2007 Books on Tape

Critic reviews

"A very scary and suspenseful read." (Booklist)
"Lutz gives us further proof of his enormous talent for crafting great police fiction." (Publishers Weekly)

In for the Kill

I don't care for the melodic method of the reader. It becomes irritating to listen to after awhile. The story line is not as captivating as other books I've listened. Seems drawn out too much.

Only if you're a fan

This is the second audiobook by this author that I’ve listen to and both have left me questioning if I want to continue with any more of his books. In both cases the stories have interesting themes but things seem too slow and anticlimactic for a suspense type novel. Furthermore, the villains move through the story doing their evil with an unrealistic nearly supernatural ease.

This author does not seem to tell an intriguing story like the “earlier” Michael Connelly novels nor do they deliver the satirical comic wit of authors like Nelson DeMille. This is not a “bad” audiobook but definitely not one I’d listen to again.

Tiresome

It's not clear what the intent of the author was in writing this book. Either he wanted to write a character study or had an editorial deadline and needed filler for his "mystery". There are endless ruminations by the characters that add nothing to the story and are so pointless that I eventually fast forwared through them. The detectives spend no time detecting but rather are inappropriate, obtuse and inept. An example is when the female detective becomes involved with a man who dated a dead woman. Her excuse for not being suspicious or investigating him is that would mean she is a cynic about men. When a man and woman present themselves as brother and mother to a killer, the lead detective does no investigation of them. He uses the mother as bait in a hotel room to catch the killer and when she asks for a shotgun, gives it to her. Even a civilian might wonder how safe that is.

It is a common albeit lazy method of plot advancement for a writer to make the bad guy omniscient and the good guy incompetent but in this book, the good guy never becomes competent. Nor does the writer.

Irritating

This is supposed to be a police procedural. However, the author seems to know nothing about police procedure--either that or he decided to leave it out of this book. You are led to believe that the protagonist is a super sleuth, but he spends most of the book just sitting around waiting to get lucky. I listened to the whole thing, but I was mostly hoping that it would simply end.

OK

This is the second time that I have order and read a Lutz novel. This is not something that I have consciously done because the books are so good. It has been because the material is not memorable that I keep picking up the same thing. Therefore I am writing a review to make a record for me.

Based on the repeat purchase the books are nothing extraordinary and I need to stop trying to find what the "it" is about Lutz novels. The crimes are original, brutal and gripping. The the characters have a tendency to a lot of self diagnose about past cases or their life situations than solving the crime. As police, you find their ruminations to be the typical problems of a cop life; obsessed with cases, late nights, moody and emotional stunned.

The Frank Quinn team seem to all be maladjusted individuals who make irrational, and dangerous decisions base more on their maladie. Since I find the summaries of the Quinn novels are interesting but the books are unmemorable this is the last Lutz novel.

This one is basically an boy who had a unusually murderous example of a parent and of course grows to emulate their past. The killer, as usual, has a high degree of intelligence who is able to confound and elude our number one detective team. There is a twist something we nor the detective team would even consider. If this is your first Quinn novel give it a try. I would not try a second Quinn. You will have to endure hours of his past life.