Reviewed by Kayla Cook for Readers' Favorite

Bobby Cotton spends his days filling customers’ orders at his local coffee shop and pining after one of his regulars. Everything changes, however, when he stumbles across a dead woman in the woods. He’s never met her before, but something about her draws him. Before long, he starts to hear her voice in his head. To keep her from fading away, Bobby must supply her with new vessels, but at what cost? Detective Greg Burns has no idea what he's in for when he begins investigating the first of a string of murders. When the killer starts communicating with him, Greg realizes the case is far more dangerous than he could have imagined. When a woman who might be the killer’s latest victim is found not far from Bobby's coffee shop, Greg's and Bobby's paths cross, but that only leads to more questions. All the while, the killer draws closer and closer to Greg’s own family. Soon it’s not just Greg’s job on the line, but his and his family’s lives, as well. Will Greg catch the killer before he loses everything? Will Bobby triumph over the madness threatening to overcome him? Find out in The Suicide Killer by Zach Lamb.

The Suicide Killer absolutely blew me away. The game of cat and mouse between the killer and the detective kept me on the edge of my seat. Even after the killer’s identity was confirmed, I couldn’t predict what happened—especially the ending. A recurring tone in The Suicide Killer is one of futility, but much in the story was also ironic and darkly humorous at times. All the characters were engaging, but what I liked most about The Suicide Killer was how “normal” the killer was, and while there were intriguing hints dropped about the killer’s past, it was mostly ambiguous. This all added to the creepiness and impact of the work because the killer could literally be anyone. I enjoyed how Zach Lamb wrote from multiple character perspectives, which gave me a better understanding of each character. The narrative and dialogue were artfully constructed to build suspense, drop subtle hints to the reader, and increase readers’ sympathy and the work’s emotional intensity. The Suicide Killer by Zach Lamb is an engrossing psychological thriller that’s sure to appeal to fans of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon.