Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Six titles that elevate the serial killer thriller

The Fields is Erin Young’s first contemporary thriller, following Sergeant Riley Fisher of the Black Hawk County Sheriff’s Office. On publication in 2022, it became a Glamor Book of the Year, a Times Thriller of the Month, was picked by Amazon USA as a best book of the month, and Young was named in Oprah Daily as one of the best female thriller writers of the year. The Fields was also a finalist for hardcover thriller of the year at the ITW awards. It is in development for TV by the producers of Big Little Lies and City on a Hill.

Original Sins, the sequel to The Fields, is now in bookstores.

At CrimeReads Young tagged six titles that dive into "the things that turn people into killers, the experience of victims, and society’s reaction to the murders," and elevate the serial killer thriller. One title on the list:
THE FIVE, Hallie Rubenhold

Rubenhold takes a grim tale we think we know – that of Jack the Ripper – and inverts it, so the story becomes about his female victims and the lives they led in late nineteenth-century London. Instead of the all-too-common focus on the shadowy Ripper and his grisly crimes, it’s the women – through Rubenhold’s deft and thoughtful skill as a historian – who come blazing into full color, as we explore their lives, loves, hopes and misfortunes, and the tragic circumstances and societal constraints that led each of them into a place where they were vulnerable to danger.

A timely and necessary read that makes us question our obsession with killers over victims.
Read about the other entries on the list.

The Five is among Janina Ramirez's top ten books about women written out of history and Sarah Weinman's ten groundbreaking true crime books.

--Marshal Zeringue