The Girls He Adored by Jonathan Nasaw

The Girls He Adored by Jonathan Nasaw
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - 1 day

Pages - 448

Publisher - Atria

Source - Bought years ago

Blurb from Goodreads

For ten years, the charmingly disheveled veteran FBI Special Agent E.L. Pender has been investigating the apparently random disappearances of a dozen women across the country. The only detail the cases have in common is the strawberry blond color of the victims' hair, and the presence of a mystery man with whom they were last seen.

Then, in Monterey, California, a routine traffic stop erupts into a scene of horrific violence. The local police are stunned by a disemboweled strawberry blond victim and an ingenious killer with multiple alternating personalities. Pender is convinced he has found his man, but before he can prove it, the suspect stages a cunning jailbreak and abducts his court-appointed psychiatrist, Irene Cogan.

In a house on a secluded ridge in Oregon, Irene must navigate through the minefield of her captor's various egos -- male and female, brilliant and naive, murderous and passive -- all of whom are dominated by Max, a seductive killer who views her as both his prisoner and his salvation. Irene knows that to survive she must play along with Max's game of sexual perversion. Only then will she be able to strip back the layers to discover a chilling story of a shattered young boy -- and all the girls he adored.

A sexually charged thriller of extraordinary originality and page-turning suspense, The Girls He Adored moves furiously from the inner recesses of the psyche to its final, startling climax. Jonathan Nasaw brilliantly portrays two equally intense characters -- a deviant killer and the expert who can unlock his darkest secrets -- and introduces one of the most likable sleuths in recent fiction.



My Review

I have had this on the shelves for a while and heard folk talk about it even longer. A bag guy is in jail, he is very very dangerous, on par with Lecter. court-appointed psychiatrist, Irene Cogan. is brought in to assess a prisoner witholding their identity but also presenting as multiple personality disorder (mpd)..............and stage set! FBI Special Agent E.L. Pender has been convinced for years there is a serial killer on the loose and risked much to prove it, could this guy be the one who has evaded him for years?

Guys this book is not for the faint hearted, the bad guy has multiple personalities, some cunning, some psychotic/murderous/naïve. This was a huge draw for me, I have read hundreds of crime books and mpd doesn't feature in many of them. This one was so compelling because they are all so different and getting to see how the psychiatrist assesses them and interacts with this bad guy was so good. There is a huge aspect of sexual deviancy/abuse/violence and real bottom of the barrel aspects of humanity so again NOT FOR THE FAINT HEARTED!

Compelling, shocking, twists, so so dark in some parts but it pulls the reader in from the very first pages, NEEDING to know where it is going to go. There are another four in the series, I have no idea where they are going to go but I am absolutely ordering book two (as we type), 4/5 for me this time. My first dance with this author, absolutely won't be my last!

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