The Butcher

Book excerpt: In this “skillfully penned tale of murder and cover-up that will keep readers enthralled until the powerful finish” (Fresh Fiction), family secrets and a serial killer from the past converge in this electrifying thriller. In 1985, Edward Shank famously gunned down the Beacon Hill Butcher, ending the serial killer’s reign of terror over the city of Seattle. But now in his eighties, Edward’s action-packed glory days are long behind him. The decorated former Seattle police chief has given up his high-maintenance Victorian home to his grandson Matt for a quiet life at the nearby Sweetbay Village Retirement Residence, where mac-n-cheese Wednesdays have become the highlight of his week. Though it’s hard to watch his grandfather get older, Matt is thrilled to inherit the large house he grew up in. Already an accomplished chef with a popular restaurant and a TV show in the works, Matt’s dream life is finally within reach…until he discovers a crate buried in the backyard that holds a secret about his grandfather so terrible, it threatens to ruin all their lives if it ever gets out. Especially his girlfriend Sam’s, whose mother was killed when she was only two years old. As Matt struggles with his dark family secret, Sam’s obsession with solving her mother’s murder continues to grow. A true crime writer now working on a book about the Butcher, Sam has always suspected her mother was one of his victims, even though she was killed two years after the Butcher was supposedly gunned down. But when new victims begin to turn up, their murders eerily similar to the Butcher’s all those years ago, Sam realizes she might be right. The more she digs into the old murders, the more dangerous it gets…and the truth is closer to home than she ever could have imagined. “A tense, suspenseful, thoroughly creepy thriller” (Booklist), The Butcher sinks its teeth in you from the very first page.