The Hypnotist

By: Lars Kepler

Narrated by: Eamonn Riley

Length: 16 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

You need clues. You need time. You need a motive. You won’t have any of them. When a whole family is murdered in Stockholm, Detective Inspector Joona Linna knows there is only one person who can help find the perpetrator. Erik Maria Bark, retired hypnotist, is called in to work with Josef Ek, a fifteen-year-old boy who witnessed the brutal murder of his family.

Following a series of accusations by his patients, Erik is reluctant to return to his craft but makes an exception for Joseph Ek. As he delves deep into the boy's mind, he discovers that Josef murdered his own family on the orders of his sister Evelyn. When Joona and Erik journey deep into the woods to find Evelyn, she admits that she was abused by her brother for many years. When she refused to submit to him, he took revenge on the entire family. When Josef escapes from custody and Erik's only son Benjamin disappears from the family home, Erik is thrust into a world of violence and gang warfare, forcing him to revisit his past to discover the truth.

©2011 Lars Keplar (P)2011 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Brilliant mystery

The Hypnotist is a brilliant mystery with plenty of twists and turns which kept me wondering where the story was going to take me next. Eamonn Riley gives a great performance of the audio book and Lars Kepler are definitely a dynamic duo of mystery.

Entangled stories

The combination of a great reader and a story with multiple storyline an interesting characters result in a great experience.

missing the magic

I loved the voice chosen for Joona Linna - just for that I might re-listen to some of the book. On the other hand, I failed to really connect with the story. Somehow it felt clinical and dispassionate to me. Maybe it is because the point of view of the narration is not clearly defined, which leaves me floating while reading it. There are books the capture and engage my imagination. Where I get attached to the characters and hope the story never ends, this did unfortunately not happen with the Hypnotist. Especially the long description of Eriks sessions with hist mental patients felt rather long.

I'd rather eat glue

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

It is hard to decide which is worse: the book or the terrible narrator butchering the book.

I guess what could make this a 4 or 5 star listening experience for me is if the publiisher were to include a 20 minute clip of the narrator being exposed to 500.000 Volt electrical pulses at a rate of about 4 Hz. I think the screams of pain might, somehow, help me forget wasting a credit on this book.

What do you think your next listen will be?

Not something narrated by Mr. Riley or written by "The Keplers".

How could the performance have been better?

I think I clarified this in an earlier comment.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Hypnotist?

All of them. I'd cut them out and hand them over to Sonny Moore so he can mangle them into his next dubstep track.

Any additional comments?

Make Jo Nesbø bring back Harry Hole.

Disappointing narration

What disappointed you about The Hypnotist?

Without a doubt the narration. Lars Kepler is a writer I admire, and I expected another exciting and complex police story. But Eamonn Riley kills the story.

Would you recommend The Hypnotist to your friends? Why or why not?

No, unless it's narrated by someone else.

Would you be willing to try another one of Eamonn Riley’s performances?

No

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Disappointment

Any additional comments?

I'm hoping for other audiobooks by Kepler with a different narrator.