A successful serial killer who has avoided attention for years. A DCI trying to prove he is fit to work and a journalist looking for a career-making story. Let battle commence!
The Genius Killer is a serial killer crime thriller set in the north of England.
Karl is a killer, we know that from the start. He began his killing due to abuse he suffered as a child. He also targets those who have wronged him and this makes his killings almost understandable. Part of me admired his strength and passion whilst abhorring his behaviour.
The killer, detective and journalist could all be classed as genius and this is why they are such good adversaries. The methods of death are so clever and the emotional background almost make you sympathise with Karl, but is anyone really deserving of death?
Tex Deacon is also someone who is soooo easy to like. He has has a devastating experience with the death of his wife but is eager to be back catching killers. He forms an unlikely but respectful relationship with an up and coming journalist looking for her big break.
The stage is set for the opponents to collide. I was rooting for both sides. Karl is ‘sinned against’ as well as ‘sinning’ whilst Tex is so easy to like and we want him to overcome his own demons. The writing style is very engaging and the plot develops rapidly.
I listened to the audio version of this book. The narrator uses accents to define the different characters effectively. I increased the speed to x2 or x2.5 as I sped towards the end. This allowed me to listen to the book in less than 6 hours which kept me focussed on the characters and events.
The Genius Killer is a very clever and enjoyable detective and serial killer thriller.
The dark heart of a brilliant and ruthless psychopath
A celebrated but haunted detective
A determined young reporter hunting for justice – and the big story
Karl Jackson is a particularly vengeful sociopath with his unique way of ‘problem-solving’. DCI Tex Deacon suffers from the trauma of his beloved wife’s death and finds it immensely difficult to come to terms with it. As a Detective Chief Inspector specialising in murder and killer profiling, Tex has a relentless workload from his base on the edges of the mountains of the Lake District.
Tex is under pressure from his superiors to take a step back to grieve properly. It’s clear that Susan’s death has ripped out part of his soul. There is no doubt that Tex is suffering, but this DCI is a driven man. Tex’s welfare is the responsibility of his boss Chief Constable Barbara Bracewell, and she and Tex go back a very long way. However, Bracewell must do what is right for Tex and the Cumbrian police force.
Despite falling into a mental abyss, Tex’s instincts for the hunt never leave him. A hyper-intelligent and devious murderer appears in his crosshairs – the self-styled ‘Genius Killer’. So what will Tex do? What can he get away with doing with the Chief Constable monitoring his every move?
And then there’s Debbie Pilkington, a tenacious and hugely ambitious cub reporter at the local paper – The Rimpton Chronicle. Debbie has big stories and a big future in her own sights. A young journalist, a craggy and vastly experienced detective, and one of the most dangerous serial killers Britain has even seen. Their lives were about to intertwine. The chase to stop a cunning killer begins. Tex is a master at breaking down the thinking processes of those he hunts but with Tex enduring his own psychological meltdown, can he penetrate the mind of this supremely malevolent psychopath?
Mark’s Bio
I’ve been a journalist and broadcaster for over forty years working almost exclusively in sport. I was employed for fifteen years by SKY Sports, eleven years by the BBC, and three years by UTV. Elsewhere I have worked on significant national contracts for ITV, Eurosport and Viaplay Sport and have freelanced for many top class broadcasters like BT and NEP. I have been involved in BAFTA and Sony award winning programmes. For the last number of years I have focused on rugby, my main sporting passion, as a commentator and reporter with SKY, as well as Premier Sport and, formerly, Setanta Sport and Eirsport. I’ve commentated on four Rugby World Cups and two football World Cups and covered the Olympics in Sydney in 2000. I was working on the Six Nations Rugby as a commentator for NEP when all sport stopped due to the corona virus pandemic, so, after some persuasion from my then girlfriend Petra, I decided to write my first novel.
The seed for the novel came from a comment made to me by a senior member of the fell running community who knew well many members of the amazing, life saving Mourne Mountain Rescue Team in Northern Ireland. We were out for a fell run one day and were talking about the thousands of rescues Mourne Mountain Rescue had carried out. Out of the blue my craggy companion whispered, “If you want to commit murder – and get away with it – the mountains are the perfect place to do it” .Fell running has been a passion for me. I’ve run over a hundred races and competed in many navigation focused Mourne Mountain Marathons. Unbelievably, for me, I managed to crawl to the finish line in a couple of 50 mile Ultra races. One was in the Addo Elephant Safari Park in the Zuurberg mountains in South Africa and the other was the Grand Raid des Pyrenees. I was rubbish – always one of the stumblers right at the back of the field! I’ve hiked in the Andes, the Blue Mountains, the Picos de Europa, the Alps and other ranges around the globe so no surprise then that quite a bit of ‘The Genius Killer’ is set in the mountains. In this case the magnificent peaks of the Lake District.
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