Review: Hunter

Hunter by Jack Heath
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Overall, not as exciting and fast-paced as the first, but definitely more gruesome.

WARNING: This review contains major spoilers for Hangman

Recap: At the end of the first book, Blake had determined that helping the FBI maybe wasn't for him and so was pursuing other business ventures. He'd broken off contact with the love interest, Thistle, because he was too worried about hurting her. Oh yeah. He also had that nasty habit of snacking on human flesh.

Do you know how much it killed me to not mention that in my review for Hangman?! Not even in spoiler tags! Because it is such a massive twist and made the whole story a thousand times more exciting. It hooked me real good, coz I've never read anything like that before.

Sadly, because this is the sequel, I've now read something like that before.

What I mean is, that's the twist that grabs you right away and keeps you hanging on, but to get that same kind of attention in this book we really needed more to sink our teeth into (ha ha) because it's no longer a surprise.

This book opens with Blake working for the bad guys, disposing of bodies in his highly unique manner. Then he stumbles across a body that's not one of his but he takes a bite out of it anyway. This part kind of disturbed me - I mean, wouldn't that kind of be like stumbling over a cheeseburger in the gutter and deciding it looks tasty? Seemed a bit unsanitary to me, to be honest. But how would I know, really. Not like I make a habit of eating people.

Anyway.

So then there's drama because our favourite FBI lady, Agent Thistle, asks for Blake's help on a missing persons case and you'll never guess who they're looking for.

Yep. The cheeseburger.

What follows is a lot of chaos that involves scumbags and dead bodies and violence and gore and one super confusing investigation that just doesn't seem to add up. All the while, Blake has to deal with his feelings towards Thistle, and that niggling bad habit of eating human corpses. Poor guy.

I had a few issues with this book that didn't crop up in the first. In Hangman, Blake is super intelligent, he puts things together really well, and he figures things out logically. In this book, it feels like his IQ has dropped significantly. Maybe he ate too many idiots, I don't know. Whatever the reason, he just doesn't seem to have his head in the game this time around. I won't go into detail as I don't want to reveal anything too interesting before the book drops in March. But he has changed, and it makes me a little sad. There's also some questionable puzzles that really don't make sense when you think about them (More on this post-release).

The Blake/Thistle vibe is also a lot more loved up because obviously they did all the slow stuff in book 1 so now it's all about the feelings. I'm not big on feelings. I was mostly just waiting for her to discover she'd sucked face with a cannibal. Still, there's the drama of him trying to hide it all, so even though the dynamic has changed I enjoyed that aspect of it. You think you have relationship issues. Sheesh.

The crime investigation itself was incredibly messy because there was so much going on, and so many clues that just didn't make sense. It was kinda good because it was unpredictable but then it was also kinda bad because I lost interest a little bit. It jumped around a bit too much for me to follow, and there was a bit more focus on Blake's personal life, I felt.

I did really love The Gore Factor, though. This one got hella messy compared to the first book. Finally we are getting some Silence of the Lambs savagery. I don't know what it says about me that I prefer reading about people getting their faces chewed off more than people talking about feelings but there you have it. Gruesome is way more fun. Maybe it was a little gratuitous here, but I am grateful. Hooray violence! (I'm actually not a psycho in real life, I promise.)

Also.

Look I got a bit frustrated with the riddles this time around because they were hard LOL. So many went unsolved because I wanted to read on instead of wasting actual brain power trying to figure out the hard ones. I'm still keen for that Solutions page.

In general, I liked it, and I'm so glad I got early access to it coz the first book was such a win. This one has to work harder now that the big surprise is out, but I think it maybe tries a little too hard to be impressive so all in all it feels a little jumbled.

I think fans of the first book are still going to enjoy this one, but there'll be mixed reviews depending on what drew you in in Hangman. I'd still recommend it, though!

Many thanks to Pan Macmillan for my Uncorrected Proof copy.


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