What started off as a fast-paced police procedural thriller became so convoluted and confusing that it was hard to follow. The main character's flashbacks were perplexing and never really tied back into the overall story. It is well written with interesting characters but I lost interest halfway through and only finished to find out what happened, only to find the ending just as convoluted and confusing as the rest of the book.. Sorry, I don't recommend this one.

I had fun reading this police procedural. The nature of the crime is unique and I had to know what would happen next.

I try to be as honest as possible with all my reviews. While this wasn't my absolute favorite read, I do feel as ifnthe author is going to be someone to watch. Maybe I wasn't able to fully keep up, but I got a little lost throughout the book. While I'm not a fan of the plot and found it a bit confusing, the writing was well executed. The first chapter reeled me in, but the body of the book lost me quick. I felt it was a bit rush and a lot of characters. I will definitely try this author in the future!

I struggled to finish this but kept going to figure out who the murderer was and why. A disappointing ending that left a lot of unknowns. Also didn’t really get the younger Jessica story in Venice as it seemed not really related to the murderers.

This is not my normal type of thriller, but I was able to finish it. It was very atmospheric, which I haven’t read a lot of, but must admit it was well done and really got me into the atmosphere it wanted me in. I think it was a great start to a series, and those who love atmospheric reads, will absolutely love this book! Has some good thrills, chilling chills, twisty turns, and shocking shocks! Characters were developed in an amazing way, which made me connect to them and the atmosphere they were thrown into! I highly recommend to those who love those atmospheric thrill rides, as this is definitely one that will give you the things you’re craving!

Will buzz around platforms!

While a famous author is at a book reading, his wife has been found murdered at their home in and detective Jessica Niemi is trying to find the culprit but she seems to be one step behind all the time. There are other grisly events and all clues point to the author’s books.

The beginning of this Finnish thriller was quite exciting but half way through I thought it became a bit convoluted. Not only that but throughout the story, we get flashbacks to Jessica’s past and that seemed to really pull me away from the story because I felt like I was reading two different novels, one an ill-fated romance and the other a murder mystery. Not sure if I would read another in what I believe is to be a series.

Unfortunately, this was a DNF. This one had so much potential, but it just fell into the formulaic script of most thrillers that I've read this year. I haven't had much success with nordic noir, and this was no exception.

This is a good, solid, off-the-beaten path mystery set in Helsinki. The central mystery keeps the suspense taut and keep you wondering what exactly is going on. The main character is nuanced and layered and we keep learning more and more about her mysteries through flashbacks scattered throughout. I haven't read a lot of Scandinavian mysteries, but I appreciated a new setting (not New York City or the quaint English countryside) and the slightly supernatural edge to the goings-on. I felt the end was a bit anticlimactic and left some threads dangling, though. But I would be interested in seeing what mystery this female detective encounters next.

The Witch Hunter was one of my favourite books this year. I highly recommend this novel if you are looking for something to captivate you with phenomenal writing.

The story takes place in the icey, frigid areas of Helsinki which give the reader an atmospheric and creepy feeling of continuous foreboding as a young detective Jessica Niemi takes on a horrific murder of the wife of a best selling author who wrote an international selling "Witch Hunter" trilogy. The wife was home.alone with no sign of a break-in and hours later another body is found in the lake behind their property drowned and frozen in the water. The husband and author was three hours away at a book signing so the detectives know he is not a suspect at the moment until.they find clues to the murders resembling the vicious crimes that take place in his book series. As the detectives follow the clues they realize that if the murders follow along the book trilogy then there will be more murders before the.night is over and many more to follow and they will have more suspects than they could ever have imagined plus Jessica feels that the murders are tied to her somehow when it is revealed that she could be a mirror image for the.first two bodies that were found on her watch.

I really enjoyed this suspense filled creepy, crime thriller. The story hinges on the verge of the supernatural and teases the reader with subtle hints of the possibility of the case being caught up in an area that is not just standard police work. There is another story taking place within the book again teasing that this history of Jessica will help solve the mysteries of the macabre murders and crimes that are taking place. I appreciated the double story and background of Jessica since it will play into a shocking climax at the conclusion of the book. This novel was extremely creepy and intriguing and I would love to read more books along this line not knowing if the supernatural is really taking place or it is just your imagination.

I want to thank the publisher "Berkley Publishing" and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this deliciously, creepy novel and any thoughts and opinions expressed are unbiased and mine alone!

I have given this captivating book a rating of 4 Sinister And Macabre 🌠🌠🌠🌠 Stars!!

I was very excited for this title and it started off really strong! It had all the makings of a good thriller, but ultimately I was disappointed.

The plot was...confusing. Too may plot points and the author trying to do too much. I stopped far too many times, flipped back a couple pages and said wait...what? The ending felt disjointed. Like they changed their mind halfway through and just tried to make it work.

I DID enjoy all the supernatural elements, and the settings were gorgeous. The author really knows how to set a scene and draw you in initially - the follow though just needs some work.

This Finnish mystery-thriller was dark and kind of weird. The mystery started off pretty compelling, though it was interspersed with chapters of a younger Jessica involved in a love affair in Venice, which threw me at first, since the chapters are unmarked as happening at a different time, and really killed the flow of what was happening in current day.
Ultimately, I don't think the reasonings behind the murders made much sense, though there were some creepy, twisty moments. And the long drawn out exposition of Jessica's time in Venice didn't made much sense to me either, except as a very dark point. And the very end was a "Huh. What just happened?" moment for me, so not sure I'd recommend this. Read at your own risk.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an advanced reading copy.

Since this is the first book of this series from Finland, I'm going to concentrate on the characters and the style of the writing. The main protagonist, Jessica Niemi, is a quirky (as in weird) driven detective who has a backstory interwoven with the rest of the mystery. I felt that even though the backstory was OK, it was too long (about 25% of the book) and too convoluted and took away from the rhythm of the rest of the book. Mostly I kept losing track of the clues related to the mystery.

None of the secondary characters, including the antagonists are fleshed out and some of them seem to be thrown in to explain why something happened, but didn't really explain it. Each of the members of the police had one special action that repeated throughout the book, like chewing gum or humming to themselves so they were instantly identifiable. But all this did was to confuse me as who was who and what they were supposed to be doing.

It just didn't make a good impression on me, and I felt that the mystery itself was forced and not well enough explained as to who the antagonists were.

This was an interesting read. I didn’t particularly like the character development but overall it did hold my attention. I look forward to more from this author.

This was a 4.5 stars out of five for 90% of the book. The story follows Jessica Niemi, a Finnish police officer, and her team members as they try to make sense out of a series of mystifying murders centered around a famous author and his wife. There are also hints of two other mysteries in Jessica's past, one having to do with the death of her family, and one of a tumultuous short term affair with a violinist. If you are okay with having to swallow down an extra-large serving of disbelief at the denoument, you may enjoy this book. For me, I felt cheated as the author threw everything but the kitchen sink in at the end, and not one bit of it was believable.

This one is hard to rate for me. I enjoyed the investigation and i was curious as to what was happening and who did it. I wasn’t expecting it to end the way it did. I did have a hard time tho with keeping the characters straight. I’m not sure if it was because of how many there were or the names since they’re not common here. It was a decent story with some good twists and turns.

Nordic noir is not a genre I am well acquainted with (that will certainly change) but I am a longtime reader of police procedurals, which is exactly what The Witch Hunter is masquerading as. I say this because it is soooo much more than a police procedural. Almost too much more, perhaps. The author has many ideas and that did not go unnoticed, unfortunately it feels like there were too many in one story. I really enjoyed the setting and detail the author put into the crime scenes. That may sound macabre, but it's a crime novel and I expect detail. I enjoyed the way the investigation unfolded and the frustration the investigators felt always being two steps behind.
So why the three star rating? First and foremost, I did not like the main character. Her behavior and personality quirks are odd and hard to connect with. I want so badly to feel empathetic for her, particularly during scenes about her past, but present day Jessica just makes it difficult. There were so many ideas in this book, most surrounding Jessica of course, I felt like some of those could have been explored in another book or even in a prequel. The main reason for the three stars is the ending, which I was disappointed with. Overall, this book is a page turner and I read most of it in one sitting.

It is a wonder that Max Seeck is able to bring all the layers of this mysterious puzzle into one cohesive piece. As I read, I couldn’t imagine how Jessica Niemi’s life as a police detective could relate to the life she briefly lived in Venice as a young woman: in the arms of Colombano, a handsome and skilled violinist whose dark intentions combined with his amorous ways.

Several women who resemble her, with dark hair and a beautiful face, are slowly being discovered as murdered. The first is the wife of a famous author, who is found dressed in a black evening gown sitting at the dining room table with high-heeled shoes placed by her bare feet. Worst of all, perhaps, is the hideous grin which transforms her face into a macabre mask even in death.

At first, the police department assumes someone is re-enacting all the murders which have occurred in the author’s best selling novels. Indeed, it appears that they follow the descriptions of women being crushed to death, or drowning in icy water. But when strange words in Latin (Malleus Maleficarum) are found transcribed in the snow on a roof, and men with horns appear to Jessica as shadowy creatures in the night, it becomes clear that much more is going on than what had been merely described in the author’s best sellers.

The tension is ever building and suspenseful. Never once could I predict quite where the plot was going, nor did I feel manipulated in its execution. Perhaps most compelling of all is the character Seeck created in his lead detective; she is a heroine who lives in a studio apartment never wishing her colleagues to be aware of the wealth she has, as evidenced within the connecting apartment next door. It is a wealth she inherited at her parents’ demise and has come to terms with as the novel completes.

Finnish author Max Seeck’s Nordic noir, The Witch Hunter is police procedural that focuses on a series of murders in a Helsinki suburb that seems like they have come right out of a trilogy called The Witch Hunt. When bodies begin piling up, detective Jessica Niemi takes the lead in trying to find the murder and she quickly realises that there is more than one person recreating these heinous crimes and that something much more sinister is at play.

The Witch Hunter is written in the third person and takes a look at the plot from a couple different characters points of view. Each of the characters in Seeck’s novel bring something interesting to the overall plot and all make sense to the story. The voices of each character sometimes blend together, maybe because of lack of distinction. It would’ve been nice to have the character name at the beginning of each chapter so that the reader was aware of who’s point of view they were reading from.

The largest theme in Seeck’s novel is the Occult and witchcraft. It is the central theme to not only the book, but also to the murders that take place in the novel. It feels like this is not normally the focus for murders in books, however it makes for an extremely interesting plot that will keep the reader guessing what is going to happen next. Other than the Occult and witchcraft, there aren’t any overarching themes that stand out to the reader and because of this the novel feels very one dimensional. The reader does learn about Jessica’s past and it feels like it was added in so that the reader can see her growth as a person, but it felt out of place.

Seeck has written over 100 chapters for The Witch Hunter and what can seem daunting at first glance, the reader will quickly notice that these chapters are incredibly small. Depending on how you look at it, this can be absolutely lovely because the reader will feel like they are getting a lot of reading in. At the same time, a lot of these chapters could’ve been combined to create fewer yet bigger chapters. There are often a few that didn’t need to be broken up and because of this, things can feel quite choppy.

The story overall felt like it was never-ending and because of that, it was boring in parts that maybe could’ve been left out. The reader also jumps between the now and Jessica’s past. There is no way of knowing that this has happened other than the change in chapter so the first time that this happens it might take the reader a second to figure out what is going on. While it was nice to read about Jessica’s past, it almost felt forced and the way it tied into the now felt sloppy and redundant. Overall, The Witch Hunter was an entertaining read and those who find the occult and witchcraft an interesting topic will enjoy this book. Seeck ended the book leaving the reader wondering if they will be seeing Jessica Niemi again soon.

When the wife of a best selling author is murdered in Helsinki, it appears the killer is mimicking the deaths in the author's famous series, The Witch Hunter. Jessica Niemi is leading the investigation, trying to find the killer, who seems to be one step ahead of her. This is the first book in the Jessica Niemi series.

This is a well written thriller with many twists and turns. Fans of thrillers and Nordic Noir will not be disappointed.

I received a free copy of this book from the publishers via Netgalley. My review is voluntary.