Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for ‘The Butcher and the Wren’, a tense and terrifying serial killer mystery set in the bayous of Louisiana.
Thanks to Sriya at Michael Joseph for inviting me onto the tour and for my copy of the book in exchange for an honest review – opinions are always my own.
I was definitely intrigued by this book – as it’s written by an autopsy technician and true-crime podcaster, I had high hopes that Alaina Urquhart would know her stuff.
I can confirm – she does.
This is a gruesome and fast-paced crime novel that focuses – in alternating chapters – on Dr Wren Muller, forensic pathologist, and the Bayou Butcher, a serial killer plaguing New Orleans. In the claustrophobic heat and inhospitable swamps of the area, the Bayou Butcher hunts his prey and sets out an elaborate game for the New Orleans Police Department…a game that Dr Muller needs to help them play.
As anticipated, Urquhart draws on her own extensive experience within the autopsy suite to bring her story to life – the pathological investigations are detailed, often stomach-churning, but also interesting and apposite. Indeed, I much preferred the chapters focusing on Dr Wren Muller as they furthered the investigation and constructed a character with empathy, intelligence and strength. I wanted there to be more of Wren and less of Jeremy (the Bayou Butcher’s real name that somehow doesn’t match how I saw him at all – not a spoiler by the way as he features in the first chapter!) The serial killer chapters were disturbing and creepy – as intended by the writer, of course – but sometimes a bit too uncomfortably sadistic and awful.
The plot is well-constructed and manages to pack in some genuinely surprising twists along the way. I liked that, even though we saw a lot of what Jeremy was up to in the chapters featuring him, there were still a lot of things that were unexpected. Most of these twists worked brilliantly, although one left me wondering how it was set up and there were no answers, I liked the ending and hope there is more of Dr Wren Muller to come.
This is quite a short book and I’ll admit that I raced through it with bated breath to find out what happened – surely the sign of a good crime thriller.
I’d recommend this to fans of crime fiction who aren’t deterred by some really gruesome scenes and being a little bit too close to a serial killer! It’s an interesting take on crime fiction from inside the autopsy lab – and Urquhart’s work on her podcast ‘Morbid’ has clearly given her plenty of material to construct a terrifying and plausible killer who can stalk the streets without attracting suspicion.
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