I’m not quite sure how I found this book but I was in the mood for a thriller and this sounded interesting. The Chestnut Man is about a serial killer who hacks off his victim’s limbs and leaves a little chestnut doll behind. As detectives Thulin and Hess investigate, they realise that this crime may be tied to a kidnapping and murder that took place a year ago.

One thing about this book was that the cover and blurb kept emphasising that the writer was a TV writer. And it definitely felt this way – I think this would make an interesting episode or movie. But as a book, this sometimes felt like it was a collection of scenes. This was probably due to the short length each chapter – often four or five pages on my Kindle Fire. Add the fact that each new chapter tends to open with a different character’s POV and the effect is a jumpy narrative.

There’s also a side-effect of it being harder for me to empathise with the lead characters. The book moves between Thulin, Hess, and other significant characters so quickly that I didn’t have the time to get used to each characters. It felt like I was constantly moving from character to character’s POV and it was a bit tiring.

Although I wasn’t a fan of the short chapters, I thought the story was interesting. Once I got used to the changing nature of the narrative, I found myself very interested in finding out the identity of the killer and how all these seemingly random victims were connected.

With regards to characters, I thought they were okay. I didn’t dislike them, but like I mentioned before, the short chapters made it hard for me to get to know them and I ended up without any favourites, something which is pretty rare for me.

Overall, I enjoyed this. I don’t know if I’ll read more from the author, but I don’t regret the book. I hope it gets made into a TV mini-series or movie in the future – I think the story would be great in an audio-visual medium.

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