Notes on an Execution

This book caught my attention with its premise that uses the POVs of three women who are each connected to Ansel Packer, a serial killer who murdered four women and is now on death row. Through these POVs and flashbacks (including sitting in on Ansel's final 24 hours), the reader gets a look into his early life and how his childhood and life experiences influenced the man he became.

The book has a creepy quality (death row serial killers will do that), but this is not a thriller per se. I appreciated that Kukafka leaves the graphic, gory crimes to the readers' imaginations but it wasn't a tension-filled read and I was left unsure of how the author wanted me to respond to this book. By going back to Ansel's earliest days, was she hoping for sympathy towards this killer? If that was the case, it was a big 'ol nope from me. I also found that the story dragged in several spots with a lot of back and forth between the timelines which muddles things up. There were some short, tense scenes that would pull me back in, but I can't say I was engrossed in this story or invested in any of the characters' lives.

Notes on an Execution gives readers interesting perspectives and is thought-provoking and will no doubt create good book club discussions. But this slow, character-driven, more-literary-than-thriller story didn't hit me in the heart or the head and wasn't as unputdownable as I had expected. Good but not wow.

My Rating: 3 stars

Author: Danya Kukafka

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Type and Source: Hardcover from public library

Publisher: William Morrow

First Published: January 25, 2022

Opening Line: 12 HOURS: You are a fingerprint.

Book Description from GoodReads: In the tradition of Long Bright River and The Mars Room, a gripping and atmospheric work of literary suspense that deconstructs the story of a serial killer on death row, told primarily through the eyes of the women in his life—from the bestselling author of Girl in Snow.

Ansel Packer is scheduled to die in twelve hours. He knows what he’s done, and now awaits execution, the same chilling fate he forced on those girls, years ago. But Ansel doesn’t want to die; he wants to be celebrated, understood. He hoped it wouldn’t end like this, not for him.

Through a kaleidoscope of women—a mother, a sister, a homicide detective—we learn the story of Ansel’s life. We meet his mother, Lavender, a seventeen-year-old girl pushed to desperation; Hazel, twin sister to Ansel’s wife, inseparable since birth, forced to watch helplessly as her sister’s relationship threatens to devour them all; and finally, Saffy, the homicide detective hot on his trail, who has devoted herself to bringing bad men to justice but struggles to see her own life clearly. As the clock ticks down, these three women sift through the choices that culminate in tragedy, exploring the rippling fissures that such destruction inevitably leaves in its wake.

Blending breathtaking suspense with astonishing empathy, Notes on an Execution presents a chilling portrait of womanhood as it simultaneously unravels the familiar narrative of the American serial killer, interrogating our system of justice and our cultural obsession with crime stories, asking readers to consider the false promise of looking for meaning in the psyches of violent men.