This is the latest Joe Pickett title, published in March. A rogue grizzly bear is on the rampage, killing, among others, a friend of Joe’s daughter. At the same time a man called Dallas Cates has been released from prison and is seeking revenge on the people who sent him to jail, one of whom is Joe. Using the grizzly attacks as cover, Cates starts to methodically check his victims off his list. Okay, the plot is wildly improbable but goodness it was great fun to read! MadDog, Oundle Crime

My rating for this is really personal; I'm sure there are people out there who would enjoy this book and that's fine. But I found it ridiculous (in a bad way)! Perhaps I was naive going into this, but the premise of a serial killer mimicking the MO of a grizzly bear to hide his crimes sounded ridiculous in a good way! I just didn't expect it to be so pro-hunting, but unfortunately it is, and I fundamentally disagree with that. The main character's morals seem totally bizarre to me - he judges the animal activists and says that they don't understand how ruthless nature is, how the circle of life works. That makes no sense though - it certainly is not the circle of life, as he puts it, for him to hunt a bear (in its natural habitat!) with guns and other weapons. Honestly this is a small section of the book but I wasn't able to get over it. Besides, this pro-killing animals lens does permeate the whole novel, and the serial killer storyline is so farcical and surface-level that it does nothing to provide some much needed entertainment. I wish I stopped reading, but the writing was so childlike that it wasn't even that hard to speed through it without missing anything of importance.