{"id":4179,"date":"2021-09-10T09:55:06","date_gmt":"2021-09-10T16:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=4179"},"modified":"2021-09-10T09:55:06","modified_gmt":"2021-09-10T16:55:06","slug":"jane-casey-the-killing-kind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/jane-casey-the-killing-kind\/","title":{"rendered":"Jane Casey: The Killing Kind"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This stand alone from Jane Casey is whip smart and terrifying.\u00a0 I am a big fan of her Maeve Kerrigan series, with its combination of character, complex plotting and nuanced look at police work.\u00a0 In this standalone, the central character is not a policewoman but a barrister, youngish Ingrid Lewis, happily involved with Mark.<\/p>\n

As Ingrid goes through her court routine in the opening scene, which sets up not only the legal surround but some of the relationships and events that carry through the book, she lends a colleague her umbrella.\u00a0 As she\u2019s hurrying out later to another case, she sees that the umbrella borrower has been a victim of a hit and run.\u00a0 As she is interviewed by a police officer about her colleague, she mentions a stalker from her past.\u00a0 She\u2019s afraid the man saw her umbrella and pushed the wrong woman under a bus.<\/p>\n

The story then backtracks in time, to where Ingrid is part of a team defending the stalker.\u00a0 She interviews the stalking victim\u2019s friend and reading the exchange makes you uncomfortable.\u00a0 As Ingrid has put it to herself: \u201cwe separated ourselves from questions of morality because we had to.\u201d She has a job to do and that involved decimating the victim of a stalker.\u00a0 As the woman melts down after court, the stalker turns his attention to Ingrid.<\/p>\n

Ingrid and Mark\u2019s life is made hellish by the man, who is completely relentless.\u00a0 While Ingrid thinks he is off her back for awhile (he\u2019s been in prison) the hit and run has her on guard once again.\u00a0 As Ingrid begins to be fenced in by other deaths, some very close to home, the threads that tie the victims together are not at all clear.<\/p>\n

As she tries to make sense of everything that\u2019s happening, she has the help of police detective Adam Nash, who helps her to make sense of what\u2019s happening around her.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the only other person who can help her make sense of what\u2019s happening is her stalker, John Webster.\u00a0 Ingrid feels one predator understands another and she turns to him for advice, much to Adam\u2019s disapproval.<\/p>\n

As this skillful storyteller sets her net, it becomes increasingly unclear who Ingrid can trust, and at times if Ingrid herself is to be trusted.\u00a0 Casey allows no easy assumptions on the part of the reader.\u00a0 While this book falls into a certain trend \u2013 a stand alone thriller featuring a woman \u2013 it also defies the trend.\u00a0 There\u2019s the specific detail of the life of a barrister, detail which relates masterfully to the story at hand and to the choices Ingrid makes professionally and personally.<\/p>\n

Ingrid challenges herself, turning the tables as she realizes her skillset \u2013 assembling evidence, putting together a story \u2013 can help her find a solution to what\u2019s been happening around her.\u00a0 Casey has always been a subtly feminist writer, and it\u2019s something I\u2019ve cherished about her books.\u00a0 Her Maeve Kerrigan series follows a young police detective who is beset by sexism as she does her job, but she does it anyway.\u00a0 In the same way Ingrid works through the system in place in her job as a barrister, and she uses these skills to solve the crime.<\/p>\n

This is also a thriller though, so Ingrid\u2019s flashes of insight come almost a beat too late.\u00a0 This complex story is so well put together, where each cog of the story turns the cog of the next bit.\u00a0 Barbara D\u2019Amato, a writer a revere, once said to me that she admired Agatha Christie because her storytelling was so \u201corganic\u201d.\u00a0 What she meant was that one part of the story flowed naturally from the part before it, making the whole a complete picture in the end.\u00a0 Casey has this same gift.\u00a0 A golden age gift, operating in the contemporary thriller world.\u00a0 This book is enhanced by its specific setting and by the characters Casey brings to life on the page.\u00a0 This is one of the reads of the year.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This stand alone from Jane Casey is whip smart and terrifying.\u00a0 I am a big fan of her Maeve Kerrigan series, with its combination of character, complex plotting and nuanced look at police work.\u00a0 In this standalone, the central character is not a policewoman but a barrister, youngish Ingrid Lewis, happily involved with Mark. As … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[675,454,672,254,14,674,670,673],"class_list":["post-4179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-barristers","tag-harper-collins","tag-jane-casey","tag-london","tag-psychological","tag-stalking","tag-suspense","tag-the-killing-kind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4179","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4179"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4181,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4179\/revisions\/4181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}