Dr Emma Stein is a psychiatrist and is at a conference where she’s raped by a serial killer known as “The Hairdresser” because he shaves the victims’ heads. Unlike his other victims, all sex workers, he doesn’t kill Emma but leaves her alive. She’s deeply traumatised and turns into a recluse. Her husband, a criminal profiler in the German police, secures their property with locks and gates and she spends her days and nights frightened by every noise or shadow. One day a package is delivered for a neighbour whose name she doesn’t recognise and so is set in motion a series of events that will bring to a conclusion the trauma of her rape and that of her abusive childhood.
Go online and read reviews of The Package by Sebastian Fitzek, one of Germany’s most successful crime novelists, and you will find it divides people. Some love this book, and some hate it. Those that hate it often complain of how unrealistic the plot is. Those who love it, some of them anyway, concede this but say you just have to suspend disbelief.
I’m with the lovers. This is a madcap ride of a book and an absolute page-turner of a novel. Is it completely unrealistic? Hell, yes. The plot has so many holes you could drive a truck through. But it becomes apparent quite quickly that the author doesn’t care, he’s not after realism, he’s just looking to entertain his readers, and entertain them he does. This is my first Sebastian Fitzelf novel, I’ve not read him before (though I have another novel of his, Passenger 23, courtesy of NetGalley, and ready to go) so I don’t know if this is usual for him at all. But I loved this book.
Absolutely bonkers and a hell of a read, I recommend this to anyone who can suspend disbelief and just go with the ride.
4 out of 5 stars
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