Today it's a pleasure to take part in the BlogTour The Killer You Know by S.R. Masters. It's a psychological thriller that plays with paranoia and the tendency to evolve along the lines of self-fulfilling prophecy.
S. R. Masters studied Philosophy at Girton College, Cambridge before working in public health and health behaviour for the NHS. He is a regular contributor to UK short fiction anthology series The Fiction Desk, having won their Writer's Award for his short story Just Kids. His story Desert Walk was included in Penguin Random House USA's Press Start to Play collection and he continues to have short fiction published in a variety of magazines. He grew up around Birmingham but now lives in Oxford with his wife and son. The Killer You Know is his first novel.
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About the book
You need to kill at least three people, right? So that's what I'll do.
When Will jokes about becoming a serial killer, his friends just laugh it off. But Adeline can't help but feel there's something more sinister lurking behind his words.
Fifteen years later, Adeline returns to Blythe for a reunion of the old gang - except Will doesn't show up. Reminiscing about old times, they look up the details of his supposed murder spree. But the mood soon changes when they discover two recent deaths that match.
As the group attempts to track Will down, they realise that he is playing a sinister game that harks back to one they used to play as kids. Only this time there are lives at stake . . .
I am going to have to tiptoe around some of the aspects of this story, so I don't give any major spoilers away. I will just stick to what I know you know or what you think you know. Okay? Then again I'm not sure I even know what I know at this point.
Imagine if one of your childhood friends, assuming you were part of a bunch of kids who used to hang around together, who announced his career goal is to be a serial-killer. Then taking that idea one step further by seeking affirmation for how many people one would have to kill to be a serial killer, and on top of that to detail how you would kill said amount of people.
The fact Will has already spent enough time on his 'career choice' to be able to give his friends detailed scenarios of how he would kill potential victims to achieve this status, suggests a certain disturbing pathology from the get-go. The others laugh it off and yet at the same time they mention how uncomfortable Will makes them feel and that at times they even feel scared of him.
Now years later when he doesn't turn up to their planned reunion the group starts to question whether he has indeed put his ideas into motion. Has he really decided to make his thoughts a reality and become a serial killer?
It's a psychological thriller that plays with paranoia and the tendency to evolve along the lines of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once the thought is there it burrows into the very essence of someone's personality until everyone automatically heads in the same direction. Mass thought equals coming to the same conclusion, perhaps without paying enough attention to actual facts.
I enjoyed the way Masters plays with the carelessly lazy attitude of youth which then turns around and is loudly critical of its younger persona, the past, and even more so of the person they are at this moment in time.
I think it's safe to say we will reading more by Masters in the future.
Buy The Killer You Know at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for an other retailer. Publisher: Sphere - imprint of Little Brown Books; pub date 30 Aug. 2018. Buy at Amazon com. Buy at Sphere.
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