On New Year's Eve, bartender Sophie Braam, the protagonist of Jennett's stellar debut, is closing up the Blue Bell bar in Bellair, Va., when in strolls Mark Dixon, who thinks being a friend of the owner gives him carte blanche to mooch drinks. The final straw is when he finishes a $200 bottle of wine, then pins her down in her car when she's driving him home. A few days later, Murph, a police detective, and his new partner, officer Nora Martin, find Mark's mutilated body, the first of many murdered men. During the investigation, Sophie and Nora become friends, each recognizing a kindred spirit as women tired of being harassed by men. While Murph grooms Nora to become a detective, Nora resents the other male officers' sexism and their remarks that she's a diversity hire. The author skillfully explores Sophie's descent into insanity as her frustration with men--their unwelcome touches, snidely sexual comments, entitled movements--grows into rage then into an overwhelming violent hatred. Initial snippets of humor add levity as the story shifts increasingly into hard-boiled mode. Jennett is a writer to watch. Agent: Mark Falkin, Falkin Literary. (Apr.)

In the rural outskirts of Charlottesville, Virginia, a killer and the unwitting cop following her trail become friends, united by their connections to unsettled spirits (haints) and shared battles with chauvinism. Sophie Braam tends Bellair's only upscale bar, adeptly fending off customers' drunken advances while resolutely meeting their other demands. In a pivotal moment, Sophie is overcome with rage while fighting off a sexual assault from her boss' friend, and he ends the night strangled, mutilated, and discarded in a dumpster. At the dump site, Officer Nora Martin assists the detective she's been shadowing for months, straddling investigations and patrol duties while steadfastly ignoring her coworkers' "just-a-joke" attacks on her gender and race. Unfortunately, lack of evidence impedes the investigation, and that unsolved murder is soon followed by those of two men found near Sophie's bar and a missing fraternity brother. As Nora's haints grow increasingly restless, she becomes obsessed with the cases, determined to tease a killer's identity from the crimes' peculiarities. Jennett's skilled writing sets Sophie's internal monologues apart from lurking-predator tropes, weaving haunting nature descriptions and twisted bits of Appalachian folklore with palpable rage. Nora, Sophie's foe, is a tenacious, sharply observant investigator whose reliance on their kinship creates suspense-building vulnerability. Highly recommended, especially for anyone following the growing thriller trend of female serial killers.

A subversive serial-killer tale that dives headfirst into a furious mind. Sophie Braam bartends in small-town Virginia, bearing witness to awful behavior from her male patrons and co-workers, whom she likens to insects: "A thousand licking tongues laid their voices like eggs in the soft places of me, hatching with every slippery compliment drifting down my thigh…an entire universe of mites writhing, making a home, under my skin." One night, Mark Dixon--a wealthy friend of the restaurant owner--arrives while Sophie is closing, needles her with his drunken entitlement, and sexually assaults her. Sophie snaps and strangles Mark in self-defense. These opening chapters build tension masterfully. Jennett plays with our sympathies by rooting us in Sophie's point of view, demonstrating how her murderous impulses are rooted in relatable and well-articulated rage against misogynistic violence. Sophie explains: "A witch in the woods is not born overnight; we are grown." Meanwhile, Nora Martin, a biracial police officer investigating Mark's murder, is haunted by the "haints" of female murder victims. This teases an intriguing premise that never fully actualizes, wherein the detective on the killer's trail understands and even sympathizes with the killer, à la Will Graham from Thomas Harris' Hannibal series. (Sophie possesses shades of Hannibal Lecter's artful hubris and anatomical knowledge, combined with the sociopathy of Lou Ford from Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me.) Sophie's lacerating insights about patriarchy are woven into tangled screeds whose ultimate point is that "all men are the same," a position that goes relatively unchallenged. The deliriously vengeful narration compels the reader to continue but is bloated with so much grotesquely beautiful imagery and metaphor that the language often impedes narrative momentum. A fascinating debut crime novel that is more despairing than satisfying. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.