Review: I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga

I Hunt Killers by Barry LygaObtained: Sash from Sash & Em
Release Date: April 3, 2012
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Pages: 368
Buy it: Amazon & IndieBound & Book Depository
Shelf it: on Goodreads (cover photo is from Goodreads)
Barry Lyga: Website & Twitter & Facebook

I Hunt Killers Summary (from Goodreads)

What if the world’s worst serial killer…was your dad?

Jasper (Jazz) Dent is a likable teenager. A charmer, one might say.

But he’s also the son of the world’s most infamous serial killer, and for Dear Old Dad, Take Your Son to Work Day was year-round. Jazz has witnessed crime scenes the way cops wish they could–from the criminal’s point of view.

And now bodies are piling up in Lobo’s Nod.

In an effort to clear his name, Jazz joins the police in a hunt for a new serial killer. But Jazz has a secret–could he be more like his father than anyone knows?

Review

I don’t allow myself the time to talk about movies much, but let me tell you something. I like thrillers. Nothing too bloody or Deliverance-y, but movies like Suburbia and The Stepfather. Sure, neither of those movies are too incredibly deep, but they keep me on the edge of my seat.

I Hunt Killers goes much deeper than those two movies as well as having amazing literary parallels. Throughout the story, Jazz, the son of a serial killer, refers back to the school play he’s in: The Crucible. The way he uses quotes from certain characters just gels so well with what’s going on in the story.

Jazz spends a lot of his time pondering whether he has control over his life in the question of if he’ll become a serial killer like his father trained him to be. It gets a little past Nature vs Nurture in that he questions whether the nurturing he was given will affect his outcome. Thankfully, he has a great best friend– who is SUCH a contrast to Jazz’s character– as well as quite the ballsy lady.

Speaking of the girlfriend, Jazz tells her that he has the potential to kill her at one point. He doesn’t do it with the intent of threatening her, just to state the fact that he has the potential of really doing damage. It made me think about other literature in which a character has done this and how it wasn’t to say, “I WILL harm you.” It’s intense, but it’s real stuff when she gets in his face about the subject.

Bah, it’s just so interesting to me to see Jazz’s progression and thoughts throughout the novel. It took me about 10 hours to read this book because it was so compelling. I’m so glad I gave this book a chance. I definitely have an appetite for more YA Thriller now!

Tagged as: Barry Lyga, I Hunt Killers, Little Brown, Thriller