The Butcher

By: Jennifer Hillier

Narrated by: Chris Henry Coffey, Corey Brill, Raquel Beattie, Zac Aleman

In this “skillfully penned tale of murder and cover-up that will keep readers enthralled until the powerful finish” (Fresh Fiction), family secrets and a serial killer from the past converge in this electrifying thriller.

In 1985, Edward Shank famously gunned down the Beacon Hill Butcher, ending the serial killer’s reign of terror over the city of Seattle. But now in his eighties, Edward’s action-packed glory days are long behind him. The decorated former Seattle police chief has given up his high-maintenance Victorian home to his grandson Matt for a quiet life at the nearby Sweetbay Village Retirement Residence, where mac-n-cheese Wednesdays have become the highlight of his week.

Though it’s hard to watch his grandfather get older, Matt is thrilled to inherit the large house he grew up in. Already an accomplished chef with a popular restaurant and a TV show in the works, Matt’s dream life is finally within reach…until he discovers a crate buried in the backyard that holds a secret about his grandfather so terrible, it threatens to ruin all their lives if it ever gets out. Especially his girlfriend Sam’s, whose mother was killed when she was only two years old.

As Matt struggles with his dark family secret, Sam’s obsession with solving her mother’s murder continues to grow. A true crime writer now working on a book about the Butcher, Sam has always suspected her mother was one of his victims, even though she was killed two years after the Butcher was supposedly gunned down.

But when new victims begin to turn up, their murders eerily similar to the Butcher’s all those years ago, Sam realizes she might be right. The more she digs into the old murders, the more dangerous it gets…and the truth is closer to home than she ever could have imagined.

“A tense, suspenseful, thoroughly creepy thriller” (Booklist), The Butcher sinks its teeth in you from the very first page.

Jennifer Hillier ALWAYS Delivers

There are very few authors whose work I will buy immediately upon release, and Jennifer is one of them. Her gritty tales are great in many ways. I only wish she had more!

Exactly what they said

Rude, crude and rates R. Moves pretty fast and that's good cause then you get to the end, which is kinda anti-climatic and Hallmarkish.

Got me out of my reading slump

This one was so good, I could not put it down. Just the first chapter drew me in. This got me out of my reading slump. Definitely need more Jennifer Hiller books

The first 16 pages suck you in …

Love this book !!! Short chapters and fast moving !!! Couldn’t put it down once I started !

Mostly great

The epilogue was a disservice to the rest of the story. It was so brief and perfunctory, and didn’t at all explore the feelings and fallout the characters would have had after that conclusion.

Also — there’s no way any police would share that amount of information with anyone outside the department, no matter what relationship the person had to the detective. I suspended disbelief for the sake of the story but that was highly implausible and distractingly so.

That said, it was a gripping story and I was hooked.