“You have to stop lying awake wondering about Tony, wondering where he is, who he could be with, what he’s thinking, if he’s thinking of you, and whether he’ll ever return one day.”

103. The Witch Hunter – Max Seeck

A combination of horror and crime to a literal extent at some points, The Witch Hunter was pretty good. Because I really like both horror novels and crime novels, I was hoping it would be better but the main character – she’s so intriguing, she’s secretly rich, she knows she’s very beautiful, she goes rogue and doesn’t think about back up, she’s got multiple traumatic events in her past (some that haunt her literally) and one she doesn’t even really remember is relevant to the story – Det. Jessica Niemi, was not very endearing to me. For me, it is hard to understand why it was sooo important to hide that she has a huge inheritance and a huge apartment to go with it. I’m not sure why the other police would consider that so important, working there should indicate they’re not that keen on burglary. And frankly, rich people tend to get more respect than poor people in the, like, world even if it’s fake respect; I’m not sure how she missed that, maybe because she’s trying too hard to both cover up and focus almost entirely on her past. If she was honest about herself maybe some of her more terrible internal thoughts would have been able to get the attention they deserved.

Anyway, though, the central mystery involves a horror author and people acting out scenes from his books and an underground cult and oh wait, there’s Jessica’s past again, and there’s lots of witchery references and it’s fun enough to follow along when the crimes are actually being investigated. I wish it had been more about the horror-style crimes. Beyond Jessica’s involvement in the crimes with her past, she’s also got an intermittent interlude about her time in Italy that to me was gratuitous and one of those things that forces women through more trauma unnecessarily to build character like endless trauma is all that builds women’s character. I guess it’s not possible to set up one of those troubled detectives, if they’re a lady, without that endless personal trauma. She would be seconds from getting fired if it wasn’t for her higher up also helping cover up her past, which she is constantly thinking about while also somehow being a fabulous beautiful detective in Helsinki. In part, I am interested to read the sequel to see if the story is more focused on horror-based crime as that would be welcome with the short chapters and good pacing this writer’s already doing.

 

Is Ozymandias hiding from his past under this hay? Or is he just enjoying investigative foraging for the best bits?