Review: I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga

From Goodreads:

What if the world's worst serial killer...was your dad?
Jasper (Jazz) Dent is a likable teenager. A charmer, one might say.
But he's also the son of the world's most infamous serial killer, and for Dear Old Dad, Take Your Son to Work Day was year-round. Jazz has witnessed crime scenes the way cops wish they could--from the criminal's point of view.
And now bodies are piling up in Lobo's Nod.
In an effort to clear his name, Jazz joins the police in a hunt for a new serial killer. But Jazz has a secret--could he be more like his father than anyone knows?

I'm not a fan of crime novels normally, but I was more than willing to make an exception for one of Barry Lyga's works. This book was such a whirlwind; I finished it in only three days (reading that fast is once in a blue moon for me.) I really couldn't put it down!

The scary thing about I Hunt Killers is how into it I got. It was hard to read sometimes, but every little detail and conversation drew me deeper into the book. You not only read about killers, but you begin to think like them as well. When new characters showed up, I couldn't stop thinking: would they be a victim? If so, what made me think that? Did they act vulnerable? Was it how they looked? You begin to profile every minor character that comes up, hoping to crack the mystery yourself before the last pages (I figured out a few things, but had plenty of surprises to keep me shocked at the end.)

Jazz turned out to be such an interesting and complex character. The book wasn't written in first person, but you knew so much about him simply from his actions and relationships, including the people he kept at more than an arm's length. Despite his circumstances being so different from my own, I still felt like I really knew him.

This is a book more than worth picking up, especially if you're a fan of crime novels, or are looking for a new kind of YA fiction that hasn't really been explored. Barry Lyga has written a captivating and eerily fascinating novel that won't disappoint.

(P.S. I don't normally do trigger warnings in my book reviews, but if you are sensitive to mentions of mental illness, torture, animal abuse, and/or rape/ sexual abuse, this may be a book that you want to pass up.)

Goodreads, Amazon, Barry Lyga's website, my Boy Toy review
Title: I Hunt Killers
Author: Barry Lyga
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: April 3rd, 2012
Page #: 359
ISBN: 0316125849
ISBN-13: 9780316125840