The Butcher's Theater: A Novel
Written by Jonathan Kellerman
Narrated by Ben Kingsley
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
A brilliant novel by a master of the genre, a vivid look at the tortured complexities of a psychopath's mind, a rich evocation of a city steeped in history -- this, and more, is The Butcher's Theater.
Jonathan Kellerman
Jonathan Kellerman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty bestselling crime novels, including the Alex Delaware series, The Butcher’s Theater, Billy Straight, The Conspiracy Club, Twisted, and True Detectives. With his wife, bestselling novelist Faye Kellerman, he coauthored Double Homicide and Capital Crimes. He is also the author of two children’s books and numerous nonfiction works, including Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children and With Strings Attached: The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars. He has won the Goldwyn, Edgar, and Anthony awards and has been nominated for a Shamus Award.
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Reviews for The Butcher's Theater
161 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The first Jonathan Kellerman I ever read and still the best. Great character development and plot.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This could have been a really great book. Instead it was too long, too gratuitous, basically too much bad stuff. The editing was far from top notch. While I really liked the premise, within the first fifty pages I had found too many vocabulary errors that I gave up and basically ignored them for the rest of the book. The basic plot was a good one, but Kellerman went way too far with the depravity. While reading twenty plus years later I wondered how people survived reading it when it was first published, it must have scared the bejeezus out of plenty of readers. Some of the negatives aside, it was one of his earlier books, so I'll take some of the mistakes as beginner's ego.This is fiction, so historic license is expected. The geographical side of things ( I found a map of Old Jerusalem City that helped identify the locales) makes it interesting as does the cast of detectives and their relationships to each other and their own families, as well as the age old battle of Jew v Muslim v Christian. Those little side trips to learn about these detectives as individuals did take up a lot page space but were crucial to portraying the human side of these men and how this case affected their lives. The same formula didn't work with regards to the killer though and that's where Kellerman was really heavy-handed with the gory unending text.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5An extremely tedious read. Whew!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My favorite Jonathan Kellerman book. It is a bit slow in the first 30 pages or so, but then, it gets extremely interesting and delivers more so than any other Kellerman book, most of which are quite good. Bad Love is the best Alex Delaware novel by Kellerman.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The “100-pages-rule” kicked in: it took me forever to read the first hundered pages and on page 109 I decided that I couldn’t be bothered to go on reading the story. Sorry, back on the shelf. I liked all his books with Alex Delaware, so perhaps not having him in this book put me off. The story did just not appeal to me, I was bored. Set in Jerusalem, a girl is found in a ditch, brutally murdered and mutilated. A team of detectives sets out to find the killer. And then nothing much happens. Well, can’t like them all…
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I've read and loved a number of Kellerman's Alex Delaware novels, among other works he's written, so the first thing I must say here is that I'm simply glad this wasn't my introduction to his work. If it had been, early novel or not, I don't think I'd be seeking out more. So, starting with that....This is probably what I would consider to be the definition of a pulp novel. Heavy on action and needless heat; over the top in so many scenes and moments, over and over again; twisty-turny (sometimes for the better, sometimes not); full of stock characters with just enough quirks to keep them interesting; overwritten; rife with moments that feel like they were included for shock value... there were so many moments when it occurred to me that I could simply not finish the book, but I kept going mostly because of the fast pace and because I've so enjoyed Kellerman's work in the past.If some of the shock-value passages and moments were removed, and some of the 'butchery' taken down from the level of grotesque gore to a level that was slightly more believable in a given moment, I probably would have enjoyed this quite a bit more. As it was, I too often cringed away from what felt like needless gore and shock-value offense--and I saw this as someone who really enjoys slashers and horror novels, too. On top of that, the book is so full of needless sexism and offensive language (much of which would have been offensive even when the book was published in the 80s), the book felt as if it were begging to be labeled as pulp literature in a way that I've rarely seen happen.Maybe Kellerman just wanted to go as over the top as possible, or maybe his early writing was, in general, just this overboard in terms of language and horror, but one way or another, I can't say I enjoyed this. Was the plotting smart? Sure. Were the characters sympathetic? Mostly. Did the writing move fast and keep me engaged? Yes. But did I enjoy it or feel like the book deserved nearly as many pages as it took up? Not remotely.I can't recommend this one unless you want a pulpy, over-the-top thriller that delivers plenty of shock value as a thriller written in the spirit of a slasher horror film.