Book Review: Grave Instinct

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Grave Instinct     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Robert W. Walker
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Government Agency   Serial Killer   FBI
Series: Jessica Coran # 10
Berkley, Sept 2003, $23.95, 390 pp.

Rather than harm his wife and child, Dr. Grant Kenyon and his alter ego "Phillip" moved out of his home in New Jersey and trolled I-95 for females. Once Grant snatched the innocent young woman, Phillip would take over and surgically cut the brain out and eat it. He believes that eating fresh human brains will increase his awareness and achieve cosmic consciousness. Grant is modeling his behavior after Daryl Thomas Chockil "The New Jersey Ghoul" who dug up the bodies of dead children in 1990 and ate a part of their brain.

He was incarcerated in a hospital for the mentally insane but has gotten out a month before the skull-digger started killing his victims. The FBI immediately focus their attention on Daryl but medical examiner Dr. Jessica Coran thinks the real killer is setting up The New Jersey Ghoul to take the fall. She persuades her superiors to look for someone who keeps logging on to Daniel’s website and after a ton of digging, they find a likely suspect but Jessica almost gets herself killed when she tries to take him in.

Robert W. Walker can always be counted on to create an exciting crime thriller with a villain that readers love to hate. Told from the point of view of the killer, the audience learns that the character suffers from multiple personality disorder but he is so evil, he illicits no sympathy. The novel is also told from the protagonist’s point of view and readers sympathize with her feelings of impotence and frustration as she tries to convince her superiors to go after the right person, not the easiest one to blame.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner