The Hunter’s Daughter

Description

A hypnotic, sinister debut mystery about a seemingly good cop who is secretly the daughter of a notorious serial killer.

Anna Koray escaped her father’s darkness long ago. When she was a girl, her childhood memories were sealed away from her conscious mind by a controversial hypnosis treatment. She’s now a decorated sheriff’s lieutenant serving a rural county, conducting an ordinary life far from her father’s shadow. 

When Anna kills a man in the line of duty, her suppressed memories return. She dreams of her beloved father, his hands red with blood, surrounded by flower-decked corpses he had sacrificed to the god of the forest. 

To Anna’s horror, a serial killer emerges who is copying her father – and who knows who she really is. Is her father still alive, or is this the work of another? Will the killer expose her, destroying everything she has built for herself? Does she want him to?

But as she haunts the forest, using her father’s tricks to the hunt the killer, will she find what she needs most…or lose herself in the gathering darkness?“The Hunter’s Daughter is a genuinely creepy, atmospheric debut. Solvinic has crafted a propulsive story of crimes old and new, the power of memory and the darkness that dwells inside us all. You’ll be turning pages all night and searching the woods for dark shadows (which just might be the Forest God….)”
—Jennifer McMahon, author of My Darling Girl

“Original and compulsively readable, The Hunter’s Daughter is a pagan treasure; dark, memorable and ultimately satisfying. Vivid and fast-paced, the story draws you in from the first page and never lets go.”
—Scott Hawkins, author of The Library at Mount Char

“Deliciously unpredictable and absolutely engrossing, Nicola Solvinic’s The Hunter’s Daughter is one of the best debuts I’ve read in a very long time. With a dash of magical realism and the kind of complicated, conflicted heroine I love, Solvinic pulls off a nearly impossible feat: making the reader care about a woman who may well be following in her serial killer father’s footsteps. Put The Hunter’s Daughter at the top of your TBR list—I loved this book!”
—Karen Dionne, bestselling author The Marsh King’s Daughter

“Adept depictions of childhood trauma and the power of legacy drive this story about the daughter of a serial killer who must now investigate her father’s copycat. Atmospheric, taut and haunting, The Hunter’s Daughter is a thoroughly compelling read!” 
—Wendy Walker, bestselling author of What Remains

“Solvinic delivers a terrific thriller that readers will find hard to believe is her first novel. … A mix of Karen Dionne’s The Marsh King’s Daughter and Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs, this impressive novel spotlights the difficulty of escaping a troubling past. Add some supernatural elements, and the result is a tale to remember.”
—Library Journal (starred review)

“In The Hunter’s Daughter Nicola Solvinic pulls off a neat trick—getting us to sympathize with the daughter of a serial killer who might just be responsible for a series of murders that closely track her father’s M.O. With a deep sense of place, and enough things to go bump in the night to keep you on the edge of your toes, I was guessing who done it until the final pages.”
—Catherine McKenzie, USA Today bestselling author of I’ll Never Tell

“I loved this story and our fearless heroine, Anna Koray. She’s my favorite kind of protagonist—complicated, daring, and determined to unearth long-buried secrets, even if her search for the truth puts everything she’s built at risk. Nicola Solvinic has crafted a story equal parts horror and fairy tale, where dark forests harbor evil beings, and it is up to the reader to decide whether these creatures are monsters or men. Both disturbing and redemptive, The Hunter’s Daughter is a page-turning tale of the pasts that haunt and the ties that bind us. A propulsive and captivating debut.”
—Lauren Nossett, author of The Resemblance

“Mystical and entrancing, The Hunter’s Daughter plunges you into the deepest, darkest woods to uncover a family’s sinister secrets with the one woman brave enough to look evil in the eyes.”
—Georgina Cross, author of Nanny Needed

“Subterfuge and supernatural elements infuse this dark, absorbing debut.”
—firstCLUENicola Solvinic has a master’s degree in criminology and has worked in and around criminal justice for more than a decade. She lives in the Midwest with her husband and cats, where she is surrounded by a secret garden full of beehives.Reader’s Guide
The Hunter’s Daughter by Nicola Solvinic
Discussion Questions:

1. Because of her father, Anna struggles with her morality throughout the book. What were your opinions of Anna as you read?

2. Forests play an important role in this story. Other than being a setting, what do you think is the symbolism of the forest in this book? Is there more than one interpretation?

3. Anna undergoes tests for the Lyssa variant. What do you think the inclusion of this gene type represents in the context of this story?

4. Nick is always there for Anna. As you learned more about him at the end of the book, does his care for Anna help shape your opinion of forgiveness and healing from trauma?

5. Do you think Anna is on her way to healing?

6. Dr. Richardson uses an unconventional way to help Anna tap into her childhood memories. What did you think of this method? Did it help or do harm?

7. Was Anna’s father the only reason why Anna felt like a monster? How do you think her mother might have played a role?

8. Do you think Anna’s mother is a bad person?

9. Strange things happen to Anna throughout the book and there is talk of even stranger things that have gone on before. Did you think there
was a logical explanation for everything, or did you believe in the strangeness?

10. What did you think of the ending? Anna’s journey isn’t over—what do you think is next for her?1

Awakening

The first time I killed a man was on Tuesday.

I thought I could get through my whole life without killing someone. I thought I could be virtuous. Peaceful. That I could broker treaties among evil men and shattered hearts. And I thought wrong.

I’d been driving home from work. It was late summer, when the skies become silver around dusk and the leaves begin to curl yellow at the edges. The sun was up, and I had the windows down, trying to absorb that last bit of heat on my skin before cold winter settled into my bones. Wind slid through my blond ponytail with invisible fingers while I squinted at the sunset through sunglasses. The falling light painted the two-lane country road in flashes of gold and shadow. My elbow rested on the window and my fingers combed through the air, feeling the swish of it against my palms. The police radio in my car hummed along at medium volume, and I was only half paying attention to the radio traffic. Though I was officially off duty, I was curious to hear if Sergeant Calvert was finally going to take the chief’s car to the car wash after losing a bet on a high school football game.

“This is S12. C1 is out of service,” a voice announced glumly. That was Calvert, admitting defeat. Finally.

“Acknowledged, S12. C1 is out of service,” Dispatch chirped merrily.

Someone keyed their radio and a burst of applause echoed in the car. That was probably Chief Nelson. He’d already left the office, but I was pretty sure the chief of the Detective Bureau listened to the radio in his sleep.

The dispatcher broke in, her tone all business. “Code 20 at 7071 Stroud’s Road.”

I glanced at the road. I was only about a mile away. That was a domestic call, and I was likely closest. The county was seven hundred square miles, and it would take a while for backup to arrive. But I didn’t like the idea of anyone getting their teeth knocked out when I could help it.

I keyed the radio. “This is L4. I’m at Sunday Creek and Route 6. En route.” I flipped on the lights on my unmarked Crown Victoria and stepped on the gas, soaring over the blacktopped roads as the radio chattered.

“Acknowledged, L4. D2 is at 442 and Coffrey.”

I thumbed the radio again. “Thanks, D2. I’ll wait for you.” I didn’t hesitate because I was a woman in plain clothes. Departmental policy was that no one went to a domestic alone. Domestic violence cases could be unpredictable as fuck.

Adrenaline twitched through me as I drove down a hill and the sun slipped behind the trees. I pulled up before a dented rural mailbox with 7071 painted on the side. A gravel driveway wound into forest, and I couldn’t see the house through the trees. I reached into the back seat for my vest, shrugged it on over my T-shirt, and tightened the Velcro straps. I put my detective’s badge on a lanyard around my neck and buckled on my utility belt. I checked my cuffs, gun, and Taser, then pulled a radio out of its charging station. I tucked the base into my belt and threaded the toggle control up to the collar of my vest.

A shadow swept across the hood of my car. Reflexively, I reached to my belt. But it was only a bird sweeping low across the road, so low that its feathers nearly brushed my windshield. My heart rose in my throat at the magnificence of it: a great blue heron, wings moving in slow motion as it flew across the road and vanished in the forest.

A gunshot rang out in the direction of that gravel driveway winding down into a shady valley.

I sucked in my breath. “Shit.”

I lunged out of the car, drawing my gun with my right hand and keying my radio with my left. “This is L4, 52A, 52A at 7071 Stroud’s Road.”

“Copy, L4. Hold your position. Backup is five miles away.”

Five miles was an eternity. Some unlucky woman could be bleeding out on her kitchen floor while her husband was booking it out the back door. That vision was clear for me, clear as a movie playing out behind my mind’s eye: a woman lying on a crusty linoleum floor, fingers twitching as the last of her air whistled through her ruined lungs.

I gritted my teeth. I couldn’t let that happen. I tried to be a good cop who always followed the rules, but someone needed me more than the rules needed me to follow them. Aiming my gun at the ground, I stalked down the gravel drive. My boots crunched in the pale gray rock while the birds screamed around me. The canopy of the forest closed over my head, casting me in shadow. Sweat prickled on my brow as I came into view of a tiny yellow bungalow with algae-streaked siding. Its roof was covered in moss. A brand-new pickup truck was parked out front, and I scanned the area for a propane tank. If I had to use my weapon, I sure as hell didn’t want to hit that.

I advanced upon the shiny red pickup, approaching the driver’s side. I saw no movement in the mirror. I drew down and aimed my gun into the cab. The window was down, but no one was there. Keys dangled in the ignition. I didn’t know what kind of clusterfuck I was walking into, but I didn’t want any perps or witnesses to drive off.

I stepped up on the running board, reached in, and yanked the keys out of the ignition. I bumped my head on the visor, and a cloud of white dust rained down on me. My sinuses were flooded with the acrid smell of a Magic Marker. A plastic bag landed on the floorboards.

I swore silently and rubbed my arm across my face. The powder was all over the seat and over me. No telling what it was yet: could be cocaine, PCP, or, worse, fentanyl.

I keyed my radio: “Base, this is L4. Suspected drugs on scene with exposure. Backup should have PPE and request medic.” Whatever this shit was, I wanted someone with Narcan en route . . . for myself and whoever had driven that truck.

I pocketed the keys and ducked behind the truck’s front fender. I slipped my hand up to the hood. It was warm. Likely, the conflict inside hadn’t been going on long . . . but long enough for a gunshot to punctuate it.

I projected my voice toward the house. “Bayern County Sheriff’s Office. We need to talk.”

I was hoping that would startle the perpetrator; that he-and it was statistically most likely to be a “he”-would go flying out the back door into the woods. If he came out the front, the truck was between him and me. Worst-case scenario would be him taking a hostage. Best case . . . he thought the woods were crawling with cops.

The screen door banged open, and a mid-thirties man in jeans and a black T-shirt strode down the slimy wooden steps. He held a shotgun in his hands. He was breathing fast, glowering, panicked.

“It’s all right,” I called. “Put down the gun and we’ll talk, okay?”

My radio chattered but I wasn’t listening. I was watching the guy pump the shotgun. I sucked in my breath, hoping to hell he wasn’t going to shoot at his shiny new truck. His shoes crunched in the gravel. I backed up and scuttled around the edge of the bumper, gun raised. My pulse was pounding in my forehead, and I flipped the safety off.

“She fucking cheated on me,” he was muttering. “She fucking cheated . . .”

And I was all of a sudden face-to-face with this wild-eyed man with a shotgun. His black T-shirt was wet, and a spatter of blood stained his arm.

I lifted my hand. “It’s okay,” I said soothingly. “It’s okay . . .”

He aimed at me and pulled the trigger. Hundreds of pieces of birdshot rattled into me, and the shotgun blast rocked me out of my crouch into the gravel on my back. Pain seared me, and I gasped.

My pulse pounded harder, faster than the panic. I hadn’t let go of my gun. I pressed both my fists around the grips, sighted through my bloody sunglasses, and fired.

I hit him in the gut. He was on the way down, but I kept shooting. He dropped to the ground, still clutching the shotgun.

I climbed, wincing, to my feet, supporting myself on the back fender of the truck. I felt surreally calm as I took a step toward him.

I fired. I hit him in the shoulder, and he shrieked.

I took another step.

I fired.

Another step.

Another bullet.

Gunfire rang out around me, deafening me. All I could hear was my blood thumping evenly in my ears. I was staring down at him, his fingers tangled in the shotgun’s trigger guard. He wheezed, his mouth speckled in red, and his lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear a thing.

I stood over him and shot him in the neck. His throat blossomed into red, and a piece of gravel, shattered, bounced back against my shin.

I collapsed to my knees beside him. Leaning over him, I watched his face intently. I knew he was dying. He gasped, gaping like a fish on land, as blood pumped through his shredded shirt and poured out of his torn-open throat. Bubbles emerged from the wound. He gurgled, his teeth stained red, and he twitched. His eyes rolled right and left, his pupils dilated, and his lower lip trembled above his sparse beard, sticking to it with a red string.

He looked up at me, gaze focused on my face. A drop of red dribbled down my chin and landed on his forehead.

And I felt it then . . . that moment where he was living and then not living. His chest stopped rattling, the blood slowed, and the twitching and fluttering faded. The focus of his gaze slackened, and I watched it like a voyeur, connected and yet disconnected to this vanishing of a man I didn’t know.

He was dead.

I sat back in the gravel. Sound rushed back into my world, and I felt nauseous. I turned my head and vomited before collapsing in the gravel, overcome by the hundreds of piercing wounds burrowing into my body like hot worms. The shaded driveway felt cool against my body.

My radio buzzed distantly at my shoulder. I fumbled to key it.

“L4, 44,” I whispered. Officer in trouble . . .

My radio squawked at me, but it sounded like a bird on my shoulder. Through my broken sunglasses, I stared up at the trees. I smelled metallic blood, leaf mold, and moss. Blood dripped into my right eye, and it stung. Disturbed by a pleasant breeze, yellow sugar maple leaves drifted down and stuck to my wet bulletproof vest. I stared, fascinated, as a whirligig seed pod spun down and stuck to my lip.

I exhaled, and its skeletal wing shuddered like a creature reborn.

2

The Fall

Sound roared around me. Sirens, yelling, and the squeal of radios. I was conscious of my sunglasses pulled from my eyes and a plastic mask fitted over my face. I stared up, up at the trees and the silver sky, as I was carried up the narrow gravel drive to an ambulance. I searched the sky for the heron but didn’t find it.

I was still, croaking one-word answers to the fingers paramedics put in front of my face, tasting blood. I didn’t know if I’d bitten my lip or bloodied my nose or if it was a sign of much worse.

“Do you know your name?” one paramedic who looked to be barely out of high school asked me.

I paused for a moment before answering, and he and the other paramedic exchanged worried glances.

“Anna Koray,” I said finally.

“Good.” The paramedics nodded as they stabbed my arms for IV lines. They cut my bulletproof vest off with scissors at the straps and cut away my T-shirt. I lay quietly, listening to the blood thumping evenly in my skull. It ticked like a metronome, a regular thud under the churning lights and motion and distant sirens. I felt myself moving quickly, hurtling over dips and valleys in the road. I knew we’d reached the hospital when white fluorescent light washed over me. I closed my eyes because the light was too bright, bright as noonday sun shining on water. Behind my eyes, I saw the life draining away from the man I killed, feeling that last instant as something ephemeral escaped him, an unseen exhalation . . .

“Anna.”

I opened my eyes. A man leaned over me-a man I knew. His brow was creased as brown eyes stared down at me.

“Nick.” My lips were dry, and the mask over my face fogged. I hadn’t seen him since we’d broken up six months earlier. He’d pursued me hard with his wit and his charm, and I’d slowed down long enough for him to catch me. It was . . . too good. He was attentive, appreciative. We never argued; to him, my happiness mattered more than whatever petty thing we could ever find to argue about. I felt safe with him. The sex was the best I’d ever had. Unlike the men I’d known before, he didn’t diminish me in any way. He and I, somehow, were more together than the sum of our parts. He’d wanted more. I . . . didn’t know what I wanted. I think I was afraid to fully open up to him, to be vulnerable. I’d felt trapped in a way I didn’t want to admit, like I did now, pinned under his dark gaze that searched my face for truths I couldn’t give him. There were shadows beneath his eyes that I didn’t remember from before.

Mercifully, he looked away from me to bark orders at the nurses. It figured that I would wind up in his emergency room, and during one of his shifts. I closed my eyes and listened to the regular beeping of the machines.

I felt a hand slip into mine before I drifted into darkness.

I dreamed I was a nine-year-old girl walking in the woods with my dad. His calloused hand was in my left hand, and we walked through a summer field. My right hand gripped a sticky dandelion. My cheeks felt warm with sunburn.

“Are we going to see the tree houses?” I asked.

He smiled, his face crinkling around his gray eyes. “You mean the tree stands?”US

Additional information

Weight	21.6608 oz
Dimensions	0.9688 × 6.0000 × 9.0000 in
Imprint	Berkley
ISBN-13	09780593639726
ISBN-10	0593639723
Author	Nicola Solvinic
Audience	General / adult
BISAC	FIC030000, FIC031070
Subjects	mysteries and thrillers, thriller books, suspense books, crime books, police procedural mysteries, detective novels, mystery thriller suspense, murder mystery books, fiction books, mystery novels, books fiction, books mystery, mystery and thrillers, mystery and thriller, paranormal mystery, paranormal books, paranormal fiction, police procedural books, novels, crime, thriller, fiction, FIC030000, suspense, mystery, paranormal, supernatural, police, serial killer, thrillers, mysteries, FIC031070, betrayal, mystery and suspense, mystery books
Format	General Trade