I just finished Jude O'Reilly's Heartbreaker, about a desperate mother's hunt for a serial killer who wiped out her whole family and left her to blame, literally. I really enjoyed this novel, chocked full of stunners, replete with a multi-twist ending with shocker after shocker.
Now, readers of this blog will know my high regard for Dexter and its spinoffs, about a serial killer intent on eliminating serial killers and others out to destroy more or less good people. O'Reilly's serial killer would be an ideal target of Dexter, he or she -- they, in today's parlance -- has nothing good about them.
O'Reilly has a keen understanding of human nature, including academe, a field I know all too well. "Some of my colleagues are more interested in their own research. But for me, it’s the light that goes on in their eyes when a young person realizes a profound truth for the first time,” a professor tells the mother hunting the serial killer. And O'Reilly's way with words infuses other elements of the story that somehow manages to be sassy, sexy, sage, and frightening throughout.
Harvesting organs has played a role in fiction at least since Robin Cook's Coma in 1977, made into a movie the following year by Michael Crichton. Heartbreaker -- which applies more than figuratively to its story -- takes this to a whole new level. Daphne, the desperate mother, is a defense attorney, and her interactions with police and lawyers provide a simmering blend of law, medicine, and often life-and-death ethical dilemmas that you'll likely ponder long after you finish the novel.
O'Reilly is British, and among the new words and phrases her novel taught me are "swallow hands","kohl eyes","plinth", and "blagging". They'll be no blagging of your time if you read Heartbreaker, and I highly recommend it if your heart and soul are in need of a rollercoaster ride.
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