(B+) 76% | GoodNotes: Spends a lot of time building up elaborate red herrings; successor developments being progressively less compelling.

I wish someone would hypnotize me and erase the memory of reading this book.OK, it isn’t that bad from a writing standpoint and basic premise, but it had a lot of buzz that I didn’t think it came close to living up to. Slapping that “The Next Stieg Larsson!”* label on any new Swedish thriller is probably automatic at this point, but it sets up a reader up for disappointment when there’s no character anywhere near as interesting as Lisbeth Salander around. Extra disappointing when most of the cha...

”They’d thought he was dead when they found him among the other bodies in the terraced house. He’d lost a great deal of blood, gone into a state of shock, and hadn’t regained consciousness until seven hours later. He was the only surviving witness. Detective Joona Linna was certain that the boy would be able to provide valuable information, possibly even identify the killerBut if the other circumstances had not been so exceptional, it would never even have occurred to anyone to turn to a hypnoti...

I really liked this novel, and would have given it four stars if not for three things that irked me about the way it was written.1) The authors (this was written by a married couple) use the present tense in narration (e.g. Joona walks into the room and sits down). At first, I thought there was a compelling reason for this, but after finishing the book, I can't come up with anything, except perhaps that it was poorly translated into English -- do Swedish authors normally write in present tense?

I suppose I should say this is a spoiler alert. Read on at your own risk. I continue to be amazed by people's reviews. Many ( most) always begin by giving a summation of the plot. This is stupid and totally unnecessary. People already know what the book is about. Personal Reviews should tell what the reader thought. This is an amazingly hyped book. I would suppose that every publishing company wants to discover the next Steig Larrsen. Obviously, Its not that easy. First you need to be able to wr...

This is a very dark, horrific story that ranks high in creepiness. Seriously it left me feeling like I needed to take a shower and wash the creep away. The cover would have you beleive that it is comparable to Silence of the Lambs or Stieg Larsson's Millenium series but I have to disagree with that. Now I love a good mystery, better still if it happens to be a thriller where life and death hang in the balance as they race to find and stop the villian. The Hypnotist certainly contains all of thes...

In this debut novel, Lars Kepler lays out the groundwork for a stunning and highly intense thriller. A boy is found clinging to life at home with his family slaughtered all around him. Detective Joona Linna is called upon to solve the case and becomes convinced that, with a little probing, all can be revealed and the killer caught, as long as the sole witness remembers what he saw. Joona turns to hypnosis in order to unlock those horrific memories of the event. Calling upon Eric Maria Bark, a ps...

I read it so you don't have to. You are welcome. This book is laughably and infuriatingly terrible. I only finished it because I paid for it, dammit, and wanted to see how terrible it would actually get, God help me. Almost all the characters are unlikeable. It begins with the detective as seemingly the main character with a dark event in his past, which, unless I missed it, IS NEVER EXPLAINED. But never mind, because the book is really not about him, it is about the hypnotist. Fair enough, sinc...

Sweden, what is going on there? On one hand, this is a pretty good book. Joona Linna is everything you want in a police inspector - ruggedly good-looking, arrogant yet polite, and always right (my favorite line? "I'm not usually wrong and I believe we're going to find your son." Tell me, Joona, do you ever tell someone, "I'm not usually wrong & I think your son is long gone"?). The story is genuinely creepy - when Simone is awakened in the night by someone giving her an injection & she stumbles

(PLOT SPOILERS in paragraph 1)I have never read a book with such a strong start. From the very first page I was convinced the story had a carefully structured premise and then somewhere in the middle...KABOOM!!! I found myself wondering:who is the protagonist? What about the murder? What about detective Joona Linna???? I want to know more about Linna..And what about Evelyn??? She sank her teeth into the throat of an officer... Will you not say something about this??Tthe first half of the book wa...

I have never read such an amazing twisting novel.There are not words to express how super this book was.I can only give praise to the authors.Erik Maria Bark, talented doctor whose specialty is the treatment of seriously traumatized persons, formerly also with hypnotize, is called to Karolinska hospital, where a 15-year-old boy lies severely injured - the only survivor of a family massacre in the outskirts of Stockholm. It turns out that the boy has an older sister who's disappeared, and there's...

When I read the jacket of this book, I found it be quite intriguing and considering how many people seem to love this book, I thought I would too. Instead, I’m probably one of the few people who didn’t like this book and will never read another one written by Lars Kepler. There were too many fillers; needless people and information that made it seem like it was all thrown in to make the book longer than it needed to be; and the writing to be weak and choppy and all over the place. The synopsis r...

I was interested, and at times, gripped by this book, especially in the beginning and at the end. However, there were times I was bored, not really reading intensely, anxious for progress. I think the book was just too long. I felt the dialogue was stilted and that's probably due to translation. There were things happening that didn't seem relevant to the story. I probably won't read anything more by these authors.

Any review of this book should really just be a video of me giggling. My God this book was stupid.Conflict was based on stupid sitcom style miss-communication, the horribly injured boy with the deflated lung runs around stabbing people with impunity, the police are ridiculously incompetent, (view spoiler)[They think the teen ran away despite the mother having been attacked in her own home and knocked out with surgical anesthetic, they get subdued by an injured teen and random street punks, etc.

First, I didn't like the psychiatrist character specialized in hypnosis. He made so many stupid decisions about his patients' lives that I would never trust in this doctor. Second, this hypnotist's wife is unstable psychologically: her son was kidnapped from her family's home by someone who probably had a copy of her apartment's keys; then this woman decides to break up from her stupid psychiatrist husband and have sex in this apartment where her extremely sick son had been kidnapped, and he is

This book was nothing like I thought it would be. An avid crime reader and lover of the darker crime stuff out there I thought this would be chilling, terrifying and spectacular based on reviews by both well known and lesser known reviewers. Was I reading a different book? As this book did not throw up anything like that my way. When a whole family is murdered in Stockholm, DI Joona Linna knows there is only one person who can find the perpetrator. Erik Maria Bark, retired hypnotist, is called i...

What a read Tour de force105 chapters .. one leading to the otherMurder Gruesome Hypnosis FamilyBlood Tears and shock Solid start of a series

This could have been so good, but there are way too many unresolved and unexplained tangents to this tale. The narrative jumps from one murder case to the next with no real explanation, I was expecting the connection to be explained nearer the end, but there just isn't one! It's like the writers had two plot ideas they really liked and couldn't choose between the two, so just sort of smooshed them together, resulting in something not quite as good as either idea would have been on its own. The u...

I read Stalker first (Book 5) and enjoyed it so much I decided to go back to the beginning.The Hypnotist, there is a lot going on in this book and it did get a bit confusing at times. Once I got into it, I was hooked especially the last 80 pages of so.The book starts with the discovery of an entire family brutally murdered in their house. As the police are checking for any survivors of this horrific massacre, they realise the young son is clinging to life… he is in a coma and taken to hospital.

I can't say I didn't like this book. I just had some issues with it. I liked the story line. Very dark, but interesting - a definite thriller! But if there's one thing I can't stand, it's unresolved plot twists. So if anyone can help me with these, please feel free...1. When Evelyn Ek is being consoled by a female police officer after hearing about her family's demise and disclosing some info about her disturbed and disturbing brother, she bites the officer in the neck and actually causes a blee...