Roger Kopnen is a famous author and the final book in his trilogy has just been released. While he is away promoting this book, his wife is found dead in their home and looks similarly to something from one of his books - is he a suspect or is someone trying to frame him?

This was a book that was translated and I am not sure if it was in the translation or in the editing from the book that I received from Netgalley, but I was missing some information that would have put some context to a few of the chapters that went back in the past of one of the investigators - Jessica Niemi. I wish I had some more info as it would have helped place these in the context of the greater story.

I hate to spoil mystery/thrillers because the ending is pretty vital for the story, but I am not sure I even still know the outcome of all the dead bodies?! I could have missed something, but this didn't affect my feelings of the book in the end. No matter the outcome of who dun it, the way that the bodies piled up and the clues that unfolded, I enjoyed the pacing and the way the author put together the mystery in the story.

I think I would try the next in the series when it is available because I would like to see where Jessica as a character ends up.

“The Witch Hunter” has an intriguing opening: called to the scene of an alleged suicide, investigator Jessica Niemi and team quickly realize it’s a homicide instead and that the killer was just feet away from them the whole time. The first third of the novel kept me engaged and interested in what was to come but the wheels fell off in the second half and the novel really never righted itself. There was also a subplot involving the main character that I thought never led anywhere. A little disappointing; I had high hopes for this one!
.
.
Thank you to @netgalley and @berkleypub for the advanced reading copy. It’s scheduled for release on 10/25!

Roger's wife is found seated at the head of the table, dressed all in black, with a huge grin cemented on her face - which is the exact same way the first witch dies in Roger's best selling novel, The Witch Hunter. The string of murders that follow are also based off his books. Detective Jessica Niemi is on the case and while she's working hard to find the murder(s), her twisted past is working its way into her present.

I thought the character building was alright. It took a while to really learn anything about a couple of the main characters. I know it was set up that way to cause doubt and confusion, but some parts seemed really obvious that the author was hinting at things and just keeping the main part of it a secret until later.

The author did do a good job of making you suspect a few different characters. I honestly couldn't have guessed the ending at any point - it was a very surprising, what the eff type of twist.

The chapters mainly focused on Jessica and her solving the crime, but there were also chapters that would offer a glimpse into Jessica's past and they weren't marked, which seemed a little confusing that she was solving a crime and then suddenly in a different country. I did end up liking it at the end, although the background story that was told didn't really play into the crimes.

The writing style had me hooked - it was one that I wanted to keep reading to find out what happens.

3.5/5 stars

A strange tale of deaths that are somehow connected. What is the thread that connects them? Sgt. Jessica Niemi is the head investigator along with her team of five; plus her chief, Erne, who knows her history back years to Venice.
The wife of the author, Roger Koponen, is murdered in a manner similar to the ones in his Witch Hunt books. Soon there are more killings which are copy the deaths in his books. Read on for the totally unexpected ending.

One of the joys of getting my hands on books prior to their release - besides the fact that they're free, which is hardly insignificant - is finding gems that otherwise would have remained hidden to me. And if in the process my reviews can bring them to the attention of other readers who are of the same mindset, well, that's also a plus.

This one, which dabbles in the occult, falls a titch outside of my comfort zone. Add to it that it's set in Finland, where all the towns and character surnames might as well be Greek to me, and I honestly can't call it an easy book to plow through. But it sure does qualify as one of those above-mentioned gems that I'm happy to have had the privilege of reading. And because it's the first in a new series, I also have the privilege of looking forward to the next one.

Featured here is Jessica Niemi, a sergeant with the Helsinki police. She's called in after the discovery of a dead body - the wife of a prominent author. It's not your run-of-the-mill murder, though; no, this beautiful lady is dressed in a knockout black evening gown, placed at the head of a formal dining table and "decorated" with an exaggerated Joker-like smile.

Not long thereafter, another woman's body turns up - this one buried under the ice near the other dead woman's mansion. It doesn't take long for Jessica and her team to come up with a theory: Someone is copying the gruesome murders from the best-selling "Witch Hunter" series penned by the first dead woman's husband. Visions of the occult begin to appear following the discovery of a Latin phrase on the first victim's rooftop - a reference to a book on torturing and punishing women who are suspected of being witches.

Creepy starts to get creepier as we learn that Jessica, too, has a few secrets (as does her good friend and supervisor, Erne Mikson. And not long after that, speculation grows that somehow Jessica herself may have a target on her back as well.

Will she be next? Well, I'll never say a word, except that finding out kept me turning pages (well, okay, Kindle screen swiping) right to the very end. Kudos to the author, and thanks to the publisher, via NetGalley, for the advance copy to read and review.

Literally the most perfect spooky Halloween read! Thank you so much Berkley and Max Seeck for this chilling paranormal thriller. I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone who likes a good Nordic noir thriller about cults with a spooky atmosphere.

This book is about the author of a famous series of books, The Witch Hunter, whose wife is found murdered exactly like a murder from the book. What follows are more identical killings in strange ways that have Jessica the detective and her team searching for answers.

Thoughts: This book was truly chilling and caught my attention from the first page. I loved the atmosphere and the main character Jessica. I also liked how the chapters switched between the past and the present and gave a few different perspectives. The story was interesting and even though I figured out where it was going, there were still many surprises along the way. I did feel that there were spots that the book lagged and lacked direction but I still liked the characters introduced. 4 stars from me!

I'm between 3 and 4 stars, mostly for the wrap-up. I really enjoyed the build up, the murder mystery, the procedural elements, and the character back-stories and interactions. It was perfectly horrific, disturbing in many ways, and the blustery cold of Finland made it such a great nighttime read while cozy under the covers, in the dark. In many ways, the book gave me elements of a Finnish "Silence of the Lambs," in that readers and detectives seem always to be on unstable footing ... The twists were interesting, though towards the end they felt a bit chaotic and unraveled. Ultimately, an enjoyable read.

Trigger warnings for a rape scene.

This is a creepy read. There's an author who writes about witch hunting long ago and whether they were guilty or not, most of them died. It turns into a current investigation when they find his wife dead, All of a sudden the awful deaths in the book start surfacing in current day Finland. There are no clues to tell them who's doing it.

Berkley and Net Galley let me read this book for review (thank you). It will be published October 27th.

They start searching everything and as they do, they come up with more victims. All of them killed in the in the same way as the book. They initially think the author was killed too, but that was a false lead. The man killed was not him.

They find themselves being manipulated by the killers. Everything they learn is being fed to them. This group is like a cult. Everyone listens to the old woman in charge and they feel no guilt for the murders. More people die, the lady cop is getting closer and closer to the truth, and she finds she's been betrayed.

This one will stick with you for a while after you put down. It's a story of evil and there are a lot of participants. If you like scaring yourself, this is a good read for that!

This book sounded intriguing with the whole author's stories come to life and a good dose of Finnish noir. But the dots didn't really connect. Too many subplots that while interesting didn't fit in with the end result.

Copy provided by the publisher and NetGalley

It was as if the killer were copying the books he wrote about witches, witch hunts and death, mimicking every scene. As the gruesome murder tableaus mount, investigator Jessica Niemi soon finds there is more than one killer out there and her name may be on their list.

THE WITCH HUNTER by Max Seeck has all the ingredients for a dark and eerie suspense with just enough creepiness to make for the perfect Halloween read, yet something just fell a little flat for me and I found myself wandering just a bit, never fully in sync with the story after the first few chapters. I did like the heroine, she had some major pluck, but, even the little details thrown in like breadcrumbs weren’t enough to hold me glued to each page. That said, I am pretty sure it’s just me, because, come on, a witch hunt and a sinister coven of witches? Sounds like dark fun, doesn’t it?

I received a complimentary ARC edition from Berkley/the Penguin Group! This is my honest and voluntary review.

"A shocking murder in an affluent Helsinki suburb has ties to witchcraft and the occult in this thrilling U.S. debut from Finnish author Max Seeck.

A bestselling author’s wife has been found dead in a gorgeous black evening gown, sitting at the head of an empty dining table. Her most chilling feature - her face is frozen in a ghastly smile.

At first it seems as though a deranged psychopath is reenacting the gruesome murders from the Witch Hunt trilogy, bestsellers written by the victim’s husband. But investigator Jessica Niemi soon realizes she’s not looking for a single killer but rather for dozens of believers in a sinister form of witchcraft who know her every move and are always one step ahead.

As the bodies start piling up, Jessica knows they won’t stop until they get what they want. And when her dark past comes to light, Jessica finds herself battling her own demons while desperately trying to catch a coven of killers before they claim their next victim."

I'm all about hints of the occult in my killings!

I like when a book gives the reader something unexpected.

The book starts with a very unusual murder – one that leaves you wondering ‘how’ a bit more than ‘why’. However, you soon settle into what you expect to be the normal Scandinavian police procedural set against a bleak Finnish background. As you read, though, you start to realize that this one is a little bit different.

I think I spent much of this read both curious and intrigued. There were all these little anomalies that ended up making this so much more than the standard mystery.

There some very creepy surprises here!

I do have to admit that I didn’t love our flashbacks. While they added a bit to our character, I found them largely unnecessary and thought they detracted from the main story line, which I loved.

I enjoyed this. I hope the author revisits some of our characters for further books!

*ARC Provided via Net Galley

This book was just ok for me. Some things I appreciated: the Nordic setting, the creepiness, the witchy-ness. Things I did not appreciate: the Italy flashbacks (why?), the vilification of mental illness, Jessica’s determination to hide her wealth from her colleagues (again, why? I can think of reasons why, but it was never satisfactorily explained). I would encourage lovers of Nordic murder to perhaps give this one a miss, unless they are really into stories that feature occult elements.

One weird and creepy book!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Who’da thunk we would read about witches today. But this author took a very interesting theory and created a book that is very creepy and extremely in-depth.

Set in Finland, this book is completely unique in its plot. An intense suspense mystery that winds you up with every page turn.

The special twist is that this book follows the police investigative team as they try to solve a series of murders that follow a plot from a book, a very twisted and detailed book.

The imagination of this author is quite remarkable and he surprised me many times with intricate detail and introduction of new evidence and crimes that keep you guessing all the way to the end.

I just love the bits, drips, and minute pieces of detail that you don’t really register until it all comes together. This is a work of art that really speaks volumes for the talents of the author.

For those that love cop thrillers and mysteries, this one is a creepy, twisted story that you probably want to read during the day. Just in case.

Set in a suburb of Helsinki, Finland, the book opens with the murder of an author's wife, while he is away at a book reading. Roger Kopenen writes horror novels featuring witches. Then, his wife is murdered in a manner illustrated in one of his books. Jessica Niemi, the investigating detective, also has secrets and it appears the murderer may be seeking revenge on her to avenge these secrets. A lot of well-defined cat and mouse games ensue. More murders happen, all described in Kopenen's books, but also related to Jessica's secrets. The premise of the book really caught my attention, but the denouement seemed rushed. This is the first translated book from Max Seeck; I will be interested to read future titles.

United States Publication Date: November 10, 2020

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley for this advanced reader's copy. In exchange, I am providing an honest review.

It's a gruesome scene Sergeant Jessica Niemi enters one late night. A woman, dressed to the nines, sitting upright at a dining room table with a twisted smile on her face. She's dead. Hours and miles away from Helsinki, in Savonlinna, the woman's husband, famous author Roger Koponen, is being asked a most unusual question, "Are you afraid of what you write?" Koponen's hit trilogy, Witch Hunters, are psychological thrillers and the question throws him for a moment. He recovers, mutters an answer, and moves on. Not thinking too much of it, Roger realizes a few hours later that he should be afraid of what he writes and perhaps others should be as well.

The next several minutes, hours, and days take Jessica and her crime investigative unit on a whirlwind of murder and trying to best a killer who knows how to mess with their minds. New clues, and bodies, keeping surfacing and Jessica is having trouble putting her finger on the pulse of the deaths. There's a clue somewhere that she, and nobody else, has been able to uncover yet. And the clues that are being exposed are unexplainable and disjointed. The only thing Jessica and her team know for sure are the murders aren't done. They don't know when or where the next will happen, or the who, so time is of the essence if they want to stop this strange killing spree.

Max Seeck is a Finnish author who has written a trilogy in Finnish but this title will be his first published in the U.S. Given my fascination for crime and psychological thrillers, it was a natural recommendation for me from NetGalley. I devoured it. It was very good, very well done, very twisty and turny with some definite mind-bends. The translation was excellent, I forgot I wasn't reading a story originally written in English, it didn't skip a beat. Character development, specifically of Jessica, made me want to know even more so I'm curious if Seeck is going to write her into future stories or if this was a stand-alone title. He weaved a secondary story into the main one, heavy on Jessica's development, and when he brought the two storylines together it was basically seamless. Up until they came together I was wondering where the second storyline would make sense within the context of the main story and when it happened "everything" about Jessica came together much like completing a large portion of a puzzle. I enjoyed Seeck and am wondering if one, his Finnish trilogy will be published in English at some point because I would like to read it and two, if Sergeant Jessica Niemi is going to have her own series.

I love it when I find a new Norwegian noir writer, especially when their book is as good as I hoped it would be. This book is gloomy, shadowy, malevolent and riveting all at the same time. It had me going in so many directions at one time I didn't know what was up and what was down. Just like I like them, plus an intriguing main character that I hope to see in future writings. My understanding is that there are more in this series and I can't wait until they are translated into English and available in the United States!

This book is due out in November 2020. Highly recommended!

This was kind of a weird book for me. I liked the setting and the atmosphere the author created. Many of the characters were very well-developed and I enjoyed reading about them. But the plot and story seemed disjointed, choppy, and in some places hard to follow. At certain points the story traveled back in time, and it took me several chapters to figure out exactly what was going on. When I did realize we were seeing flashbacks, I still couldn't quite figure out what bearing these past events had on the current events that were taking place. Once the story came to its final chapters, everything seemed to just fall too conveniently in place, but then what seemed like a resolution left some things hanging. I am not sure I would recommend this book.

This had all the ingredients to be a good suspense novel, but somehow managed to feel like a homework assignment that I had to mentally trudge my way through.

The wife of a novelist is found murdered in their home, and the details of her death seemed plucked from her husband’s series of fictional books about witches and the occult. But investigator Jessica Niemi and her team soon suspect that this is not the work of a single person.

There are more dead bodies and thus more leads need to be sifted through.

This was a challenging novel in part because I think something was lost in translation in terms of helping the reader figure out what time and place we were reading about. Right now, I’m pretty sure I didn’t fully understand everything that happened.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to review this book, which RELEASES SEPTEMBER 29, 2020.

Free ARC from Net Galley

I am not a witchcraft/occult reader so I was not a fan of that but what kept me was them mystery part that was not solved until the end and I mean the end. I thought there was going to be a "in the next installment" but no, the writer wrapped it up nicely. Well done