The Killer In Me by Olivia Kiernan #BookReview #TheKillerInMe @LivKiernan @RiverrunBooks @MillsReid11

Detective Chief Superintendent Frankie Sheehan does not wish to linger on the grisly scene before her eyes. Two mutilated corpses. In a church. In Clontarf. Her profiling background screams one fact: this is just the beginning of a sickening message.
Meanwhile, a 17-year-old case is playing out on a TV documentary, the convicted professing his innocence and historical police errors being exposed daily in the media. Frankie’s superior, commissioner Donna Hegarty, makes no bones about who she expects to clean things up – both in terms of past mishandlings and the present murders.
But not everyone working the cases wants the truth to come out. And the corridors of power have their own vested interest. Soon Frankie pinpoints just what is making her so nervous: the fact that anyone could be the next victim when justice is the killer.
The Killer In Me is a fast-paced thriller in which lies are safer that the truth, the past is never far from the present, and the ability to kill could well, it seems, live in everyone.

💜💜💜💜💜

Hi and welcome to my stop on the Blog Blast for The Killer In Me! Many thanks to Milly Reid from Quercus Books for inviting me and for providing me with an eARC via NetGalley.

More than a little shamefaced I admit that this was my first Olivia Kiernan read… She and her first novel in the Frankie Sheehan series, Too Close To Breathe, were somewhere on my radar, but somehow I never got around to actually reading it. Well let me tell you, it is very high on my TBR list now! So you needn’t worry if you haven’t read book 1 in the series, I didn’t feel like I missed anything in terms of Frankie’s past or anything, but since chances are that you, like me, will want to read Too Close To Breathe when you’ve read The Killer In Me, you might as well read them in the correct order! So go ahead and treat yourself to an atmospheric thriller or two!!

I thoroughly enjoyed this story. Frankie is an awesome main character. She’s a profiler, a kick-ass detective, a woman who is passionate about her job.
The story kicks off with a gruesome dual murder that Frankie and her team need to solve, and in the meantime Frankie is asked by her sister-in-law to look into a murder case from 17 years ago. While the present-day case is an interesting one, it was the old case that absolutely fascinated me. It made me think of the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer, because I felt the same things reading about Seán Hennessey as I did when watching the Steven Avery / Brendan Dassey case in Making a Murderer: what is the truth, will we ever know if he did do it, was an innocent teenager sent to prison for crimes he didn’t commit? Because 17 years ago, Seán was convicted for murdering his parents and for causing grievous bodily harm to his little sister. And now he’s out and working on a documentary that’s supposed to prove his innocence. Cue Frankie, who doesn’t know what to believe. Though loyal to her colleagues, she has an innate sense of justice and I felt so much admiration for her drive to get to the bottom of what happened that day 17 years ago, while also trying to figure out who’s responsible for all the current murder and mayhem.

This was such an atmospheric read that drew me in right from the start and didn’t let me go until the final page. I feel that the Irish novels that I’ve read have this in common: they are often a bit dark, a bit raw, and this one was no different. I got some of the same vibes I tend to get from Tana French, but delivered in another style, one that (dare I say it) suits me better. A very entertaining read, not all that twisty, but rather steadily building up to a finale that came as quite a shock! Kudos to whomever figures it out, ’cause this humble blogger sure didn’t!

Highly recommended.

Want to get a second opinion (or a third, or fourth, …), then check out these other reviews: