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College senior Peter Vogel is on the fast track to literary success—that is, until he becomes involved with Hannah Seeley. He’s fantasized about her almost non-stop since he first saw her. Then she offers him sex if he’ll ghostwrite her papers, which leads to a twisted entwining of their fates.
Peter discovers that Hannah is the daughter of convicted serial killer Arnold Seeley—the Robbinsgate Killer, who terrorized a small California town and killed eleven people. Now he’s on death row, and someone is relentlessly pursuing Hannah, planning to make her pay for her father’s sins.
Scared and not knowing which way to turn, Hannah seeks out Peter again. They head out on the road, running from assassins and hoping to find answers to difficult questions—all the while trying to stay alive long enough to discover who’s behind the attempts on Hannah’s life.
The Serial Killer’s Daughter is a simple little tale of misplaced judgment, spiced up with a pulse-pounding chase across the map. Author Heywood Gould does an excellent job of showing how certain minds can justify wrongdoing to appease their anger and guilt, even when they can’t strike back at the real target of their anger.
I was never a part of the whole college party scene, so it was a little hard for me to relate to Peter and Hannah. Peter comes across as a bit too impulsive and hotheaded for my liking. At times, I wanted to scream at him and tell him to slow down and think before acting. Hannah, on the other hand, seems to go with the flow, which tends to knock her for a tumble—almost as if she were absentminded. But that’s not to say that their personality traits make Peter or Hannah bad characters. In fact, they are, more times than not, entertaining in their faults.
Fast-paced, somewhat hilarious, and a little bit bizarre, The Serial Killer’s Daughter will keep you amused for hours. With its quirky, off-the-wall plot, it might not win any literary awards, but it’s most certainly an entertaining and hard to put down read that made me smile in spite of its dark subject matter.
