Book Review: Incel by Brian Lutterman

Synopsis:

They Can Find You Anywhere.
They Can Get To You Anytime.
Society’s Rejects Are Striking Back.

Disgraced former FBI agent Kevin Arneson once hunted the world’s most dangerous terrorists. Now, back home in a tense, post-George Floyd Minneapolis, he takes on a new challenge when one of his closest friends receives serious death threats. The group of embittered, sex-starved, and sometimes violent young men called incels, who are terrorizing and then killing successful middle-aged women with no apparent connection to each other. Each victim inexplicably admits the killers into her home, despite widespread publicity and hysteria over the serial murders. Arneson, defying warnings from the FBI and police to stand down, recruits his friend Camryn Becket, an ex-lover and former deep-cover CIA agent, to help track the mystery assailants. As the death toll mounts, Arneson and Becket pursue the killers, burrowing through layers of deception. In a stunning climax, they uncover a monstrous scheme that goes beyond the murders, reaching back into their own troubled past.

Kevin Arneson is a disgraced FBI agent. He succeeded at a game he wasn’t supposed to win, and that didn’t sit well with his superiors. The FBI has now shuffled him off their payroll and into a consulting business in Minneapolis. He’s to keep his head down, nose clean, off the radar – and he definitely isn’t supposed to get involved in any high-profile investigations. If anyone even thinks he’s going to be in a position to talk about what he knows, he will disappear so deep, he may never resurface.

But when his friend Shelby makes the so-called Incel Killers’ target list, Arneson takes notice. Women in positions of authority, like Shelby, are being threatened in graphic, nasty ways and then brutally killed. But there’s no apparent connection between the women, no common thread that might reveal the killer’s identity. Various law enforcement agencies claim to be investigating, but the killer seems to always be one jump ahead, and leads are thin on the ground.

Arneson can’t be officially involved in any investigation. But he can and does put himself on mighty thin ice in the interests of justice and to save a friend’s life. He asks for help from his former lover, Camryn Becket, herself a disgraced CIA agent who was too good at her job for the higher-ups’ peace of mind. The two of them aren’t even supposed to be in the same place, much less working together to solve a crime. But they’re on the hunt regardless, doing anything they can to get information without running completely afoul of the local Special Agent in Charge, who’s made it clear that he’s looking for any reason to take Arneson out.

This book, y’all! From the opening chapter, I was hooked. The action kicks off immediately with the first dead body and no clues left behind, and the tension just keeps ramping up. I was about 66 percent through with the book when it looked like the whodunnit had finally been figured out. I thought it seemed a bit early, but maybe…? Nope. But if not this one, then who could get close enough to these women to engage them and then kill them with no real sign of a struggle? Lutterman did a great job of keeping me guessing.

I’m not going to give away the plot. I will say that this is a taut, tense, compelling read that kept me up way past my bedtime. There was no point where I felt like this book dragged. There are some descriptions of ugly, brutal acts, but they don’t feel gratuitous. They serve to give you a peek into the killer’s (or killers’) minds. The characters, even seemingly minor ones, are integral to the story and well-developed.

And when that penny finally drops, may you be as surprised as I was! The ending has me hoping we’ll see more of Kevin Arneson in future books, and Incel deserves a place on your summer reading list.

Disclaimer: I received an advance copy from Reedsy Discovery, and this review was first published there.