THE CONFESSOR

In Christopher’s mystery thriller, a detective seeks a murderer who forces his victims to confess their worst crimes.

The evil protagonist at the center of Christopher’s potboiler employs a number of aliases but prefers to think of himself as “The Confessor.” Through his first victim, David Kirsch, we learn why he’s called himself The Confessor when he confronts David in private about some hidden secrets. David had set up a shell company to commit financial fraud. “I stole the money,” David concedes, adding, “I told myself I’d pay it back. But I wasn’t going to pay it back.” The Confessor waits as he pens a note of confession, then murders him. This done, he applauds himself for having restored balance to the world and views himself as a righteous vigilante. But that’s not how robbery-homicide detective Logan Hollister sees things. When a second victim—a social media influencer who hawked a “natural” path to a muscular physique, while ingesting trenbolone and testosterone cypionate on the sly—is killed in like manner, Logan begins to suspect that both murders are the work of one person. As Logan seeks to prevent a third killing, The Confessor eyes his next target: Grace Kimball, pastor of a Los Angeles–area megachurch, and a hugely popular speaker and bestselling author. He begins attending her informal Wednesday night meetings, where he meets her without drawing undue attention to himself. The Confessor is confident that an examination of her accounting will reveal that the church has bought bulk shipments of her books, thereby fraudulently manufacturing bestsellers. What if Grace is simply honest, hard-working, and compassionate, to her own detriment? With his mind already made up, The Confessor moves to claim another victim. But will Logan stop him in time?

In a genre that seldom surprises, Christopher cannily upends readers’ expectations. Playing on widespread instinctive aversion to religious hypocrisy, he sets up Grace—pastor, guru, local celebrity—as another fraud deserving of The Confessor’s comeuppance. This strategic choice yields ample dividends. Along the way, readers’ allegiances will surely be challenged, with The Confessor initially drawn as a V for Vendetta–style righter of wrongs. Readers will find it hard not to be invested in Grace’s safety; the dangers surrounding her character have the effect of speeding up the narrative, and they’ll likely race ahead to learn whether she survives her destined encounter with a monster. Christopher’s ability to toy with expectations and emotions compensates for an undistinguished prose style and characters who all speak in the same cadences. (“Twenty-two years of assemblies, Detective,” a pious old lady tells Hollister. “You learn to count a room and find the one who doesn’t want counting.”) The Confessor remains a compelling figure throughout, so convinced of his own moral superiority that he only belatedly realizes how steeped he is in blood. The author skillfully renders the excuses he uses to justify his pursuit of Grace: “He had decided what was true and bent the whole patient machine of himself to proving it.” In a book full of frauds, he is the most believable character in it.

Generic prose can’t wreck a fast-paced story that doubles as an exploration of the nature of evil.