{"id":190,"date":"2012-01-02T19:22:07","date_gmt":"2012-01-03T01:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=190"},"modified":"2012-01-02T19:22:07","modified_gmt":"2012-01-03T01:22:07","slug":"julie-kramer-killing-kate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/julie-kramer-killing-kate\/","title":{"rendered":"Julie Kramer: Killing Kate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This will be the most entertaining 24 bucks you spend all year. I\u2019ve enjoyed all of Julie Kramer\u2019s Riley Spartz books but I think this is my absolute favorite. It\u2019s a serial killer book but by instead focusing on only one victim, Kate, the little sister of Riley\u2019s estranged college roommate, Kramer makes this a more original reading experience. It also makes the murder more heartbreaking and, as a reader, you are far more emotionally invested than you would be with a long string of victims. Kramer has a few things she sticks to through the series – all are set in the world of television news, as main character Riley is an on-air reporter for a Minneapolis TV station. There\u2019s often a sidebar story involving a dog – though this one is pretty heartbreaking, it gives the whole book more depth. And there\u2019s lots of off hand humor. Riley looks at the world in a commonsensical, humorous manner that\u2019s especially compelling.<\/p>\n

The story kicks off with the murder of Kate. Riley is assigned to cover the murder and realizes with horror that she knows the victim. Her memories of Kate\u2019s big sister, Laura, aren\u2019t so fond, but it\u2019s not a time to turn on an old friend, even an estranged one. As the author alternates points of view between the killer and Riley, you\u2019re slowly drawn into both the killer\u2019s thought process as he plans his next murder, and Riley\u2019s, as she tried to figure out who he is. It becomes clear that these two things will intersect, and not in a good way.<\/p>\n

Often people ask me for books that are \u201clike\u201d Janet Evanovich, and I steer them both to Julie Kramer and Lisa Lutz, though I think both Lutz and Kramer are far better writers, even if they may not be the non stop joke machine that Evanovich is. There\u2019s humor in the work of both writers, but it\u2019s balanced by plot, character, and setting. In Kramer\u2019s books Minneapolis and the midwest in general are lovingly described, and Riley herself is a wonderful creation. The TV newsroom setting just adds to the interest of the books, as does Riley\u2019s hard\/soft boss (she has a soft spot for animals) Noreen. Kramer turns up the stakes and the final outcome all around, and her narrative skills are so fine tuned that as you race through the pages, enjoying the ride, you probably won\u2019t realize the craftsmanship that surely went into producing such a well told story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This will be the most entertaining 24 bucks you spend all year. I\u2019ve enjoyed all of Julie Kramer\u2019s Riley Spartz books but I think this is my absolute favorite. It\u2019s a serial killer book but by instead focusing on only one victim, Kate, the little sister of Riley\u2019s estranged college roommate, Kramer makes this a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-suspensethriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions\/192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}