The Butcher's Theater by Jonathan KellermanMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Time taken to read - 4 days
Pages - 628
Publisher - Bantam
Blurb from Goodreads
They call the ancient hills of Jerusalem the butcher's theater. Here, upon this bloodstained stage, a faceless killer performs his violent specialty: The first to die brutally is a fifteen-year-old girl. She is drained of blood, then carefully bathed and shrouded in white. Precisely one week later, a second victim is found. From the sacred Wailing Wall to the monasteries where dark secrets are cloistered, from black-clad bedouin enclaves to labyrinthine midnight alleys, veteran police inspector Daniel Sharavi and his crack team plunge deep into a city simmering with religious and political passions to hunt for a murderer whose insatiable taste for young women could destroy the delicate balance on which Jerusalem's very survival depends.
My Review
1985, they find the first mutilated body of a young unidentified female in the slopes of Mount Scopus, Jerusalem. Inspector Sharavi is on the case with his team and before too long another body appears. The team know they have a serial killer on their hands and a tough job investigating in a city where political agendas are explosive, the U.N do not appreciate any questioning and the detectives keep hitting walls of silence. With a dangerous psychopath on the loose, racism and poverty aiding the killer the police have to put their wits and possibly their lives on the line to bring the killer down, before they strike again.
This is a huge read, a lot of it peters out and around the characters, going back to their personal history or past or musings which detracts from the main story line. We also get an insight into the killers past and to present day. There is a lot of jumping around, many characters which took a bit of getting used to and I needed to go back a few times to keep my characters right.
The setting of the books location was very well suited, I have never been to Jerusalem however the landscape, caves, slopes and poverty stricken areas enabled the killer to camouflage himself and carry out his "work". The book is riddled with racism, hate, lack of respect for human life, abuse, torture, murder and most definitely not for the faint hearted. If you like reading about killers with expansive details on location and local behaviors this will be the book for you. 3/5 for me this time, I found the animal torture, sexual deviancy and side stories just a bit much however Kellerman does have a way with words.
This sounds might it might be disturbing book.
ReplyDeleteAs I have gotten a bit squeamish about such books it might not be the best read for me. With that, I strongly believe that literature needs to show the ugly parts of existence especially when showing these things is part of a bigger message.