What I Just Read: I Hunt Killers

Jazz (or Jasper) is 17, smart, tormented by guilt and shame, and the son of a notorious serial killer.  In Barry Lyga's new thriller, I Hunt Killers, the small town of Lobo's Nod is faced with its second murderous fiend in a decade when a copycat killer begins to duplicate the crimes Jazz's dad began committing early in his career.

Billy Dent killed 134 people, mostly women, over the course of his long career.  In the second half of that long stretch of time, he had a son.  Jazz was raised to follow in his father's footsteps, learning tricks of the trade from a very young age.  While Jazz rejects his father's attempts to make him into a second-generation monster, he is plagued by nightmares and self-doubt now that his father is safely behind bars and he is left to pick up the pieces.

Together with his girlfriend and loyal pal, Jazz works to uncover the truth about the copycat killer who calls himself The Impressionist in the hope that he will be redeemed in the eyes of his small community, no longer an outcast or a mini-murderer.

It's a quick, furious read (I read it in two days).  Don't worry, it's not as gruesome as it sounds, although it can be a little scary at times.  I recommend it for fans of Alan Ferguson's forensic mysteries (The Christopher Killer, etc.), as both are chock full of details about the detection and analysis of clues in the pursuit of a criminal.