I liked it but it’s my least favourite work by Katzenbach, after having read “Just Cause”, “The analyst” and “The traveler”.
Plot:
It’s a story about three redheaded women who are stalked by a psycho who is sending them death threats via letters and youtube videos only they can watch and calls himself the “Big Bad Wolf”, based on the character of the same name from Little Red Riding Hood. BBW is a serial killer who wants to commit the perfect crime by killing these three women under different circumstances and refers to them as Red 1, whose real name is Karen, a doctor, and she’s the only one who called the police, who oviously didn’t lsiten to her, Red 2, who’s real name is Sarah, a young widow who just lost her husband and daughter in a car accident,used to be a teacher and her family’s tragedy led her to alcoholism and depression and Red 3, whose name is Jordan, a troubled teenager who’s going through her neglectful parents’ divorce. The three women gather with each other to try to find out who BBW is and kill him if necessary. In summary, they end up finding out who BBW is (although his real name is never revealed in the story). He turned out to be a famous author of crime novels and is married to Mrs. BBW, who is a patient of Karen and a secretary at Jordan’s private school. They don’t know for sure if he really plans to kill them or if this is all just a means of inspiration for his next novel (although it is implied that he does plan to murder them). They break into his house with the intention of killing him and his wife, but none of them have what it takes. In the end, they find out that he might have killed other people in his studio, take all the alleged evidence and blackmail him with giving it all to the cops, some of his victims’ family memebers that might want to take revenge on him or some defense attorney that would use this evidence to clear out a wrongfully convicted client if he ever hurts one of them. BBW agreeds to their demands and turns paranoid with time, eventually killing himself. His wife and the three redheads move on with their lives.
The story’s development was good and it hooked me up. I also empathyzed with the three protagosnists and their personal struggles, particularly Sarah and Jordan. My only issue was the villain, who is just a moustache twerling baddie who thinks he’s smarter than athe whole rest of criminals, and the ending. I understand that Katzenbach didn’t want to take the conventional route for the climax but I didn’t feel satisfied with it. I also don’t get why he chose to never reveal the real names of BBW and his wife. The ending was too happy and I expected it to have at least one human character getting killed (BBW only kills a couple of cats that belonged to Karen). It’s a crime trhiller after all. I also felt that Katzenbach self-plagiarized with a subplot (one of the redheads fakes her own death, which instantly reminded me of The Analyst).
All in all, good story, good heroines, lame villain, unsatisfying resolution.
Three stars out of five.
by Tight_Strawberry9846