A Hunger to Kill

A Serial Killer, a Determined Detective, and the Quest for a Confession That Changed a Small Town Forever

By: Kim Mager, Lisa Pulitzer - contributor

Narrated by: Jennifer Blom

In this fascinating & profoundly chilling account, Detective Kim Mager, a real-life version of Clarice Starling, reveals how she closed in on—and broke—one of Ohio’s most infamous serial killers.

On September 13, 2016, in the small town of Ashland, Ohio, emergency dispatchers received a 911 call from a terrified woman who claimed to be kidnapped. The man holding her hostage was Shawn Grate, a serial killer whom the press later dubbed “The Ladykiller.” A key to his conviction and death sentence were Grate’s extensive recorded confessions—all extracted by one woman: Detective Kim Mager.

As an experienced specialist in sex offenses, Detective Mager was one of the officers assigned to Grate’s case upon his arrest. Grate immediately latched onto her, repeatedly demanding to speak to her and presumably convinced that he could somehow exercise his power over her in much the same way that he’d overpowered and controlled his female victims.

He was wrong.

Over a period of eight days, Mager conducted one interview after another, risking her life by sitting alone in the interview room with a malevolent predator. Using brilliant psychological strategy in a lethal game of wits, Mager successfully elicited his damning confessions to five murders, kidnapping, and multiple sexual assaults of women across Ohio.

Deeply personal and shocking, A Hunger to Kill takes listeners behind the scenes of one of the most appalling criminal cases in American history from the woman who stopped his murderous rampage in collaboration with New York Times bestselling author Lisa Pulitzer.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

©2024 Kim Mager and Lisa Pulitzer (P)2024 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"Like a master chess player, Detective Kim Mager used a combination of keen psychological insight, gut instinct, and real courage to bring a ruthless serial killer to justice. A Hunger to Kill is the story of her ferocious determination to prevent more innocent victims from falling prey to a monster."—John Douglas, Former Chief of the FBI’s National Center of the Analysis of Violent Crime and New York Times bestselling author of Mindhunter

"Mager delivers an unflinching study of a killer. This hums with the intensity of a real-life Silence of the Lambs."—Publishers Weekly, starred

“This book has all the hallmarks of a prime-time police procedural and Mager is a real-life Olivia Benson... Moving and methodical, this book belongs in the true crime canon."—Booklist, starred

An absolutely gripping story!

It was well-paced and well-written. The male voices were the only downside for me.

Gets better in the end

The beginning was drawn out mostly about the officer. Almost stopped listening but starts to get more exciting in the later chapters

Not bad.

I liked it. The story was written from the perspective of the detective, the actual detective, not by a crime writer, trying to interpret the detective’s point of view.

Unsure

I am unsure of all the things that happened. I found myself losing tracking and not caring to go back. Just wanting to finish it since I purchased it. Maybe it was the narrator not sure

Really good!

It seems to me that most serial killer cases start with law enforcement linking several crimes together, then looking for the culprit. This account describes an arrest for the kidnapping, rape, and torture of a local woman, but during interrogation, the police begin to suspect there are more crimes. The author, a police detective, is a highly skilled interrogator who gently leads the offender to reveal more and more about his crimes. It's absolutely fascinating, and very well-written. It's an inside look at how a case like this is built, which in true crime stories, is rare. it was hard to put down, but at the same time, I didn't want it to end. Both the perpetrator and his victims are presented as human beings, which makes the story even more interesting. Highly recommended!