#BlogTour ‘The Package’ by Sebastian Fitzek

About the book….

All you’ve done is taken in a parcel for a neighbour. You have no idea what you’ve let into your home.
Emma’s the one that got away.

The only survivor of a killer known in the tabloids as ‘the hairdresser’ – because of the trophies he takes from his victims.

Or she thinks she was.

The police aren’t convinced. Nor is her husband. She never even saw her tormentor properly, but now she recognises him in every man.

Questioning her sanity, she gives up her job as a doctor in the local hospital and retreats from the world. It is better to stay at home. Quiet. Anonymous. Safe. He won’t find her here.

And all she did was take a parcel for a neighbour.

She has no idea what she’s let into her home.

Published on 12th November in hardback by Head Of Zeus, ‘The Package’ by Sebastian Fitzek, translated by Jamie Bulloch, comes from the author who knocked ‘The Da Vinci Code’ off the top spot in the book charts-who could resist an invite from Laura at HoZ to read his latest for the blog tour!

If you are in the market for a thriller which presents itself as a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, tied off with a massive bow of what the f*** then look no further.

As an expert in pseudologia, the main character, Emma, should be more aware of her own, and others, behaviour than you would think. A storming start where she shoots down a fellow academic challenging her research, wherein she posted people without mental health issues into asylums based off the evidence of one sentence diagnosis, quickly descends into a psycho thriller after she gets attacked in her hotel room.

On returning with the police, she finds that not only does the room she was attacked in after the conference doesn’t exist, the police don’t believe her. and her husband is looking at her sceptically. After all, she has made things up before…

As I read on, I wasn’t sure whether Emma was being stripped of her agency and reduced to a hysterical female trope. The engaging nature of her search for proof to get people to believe her, in actual fact, reflects the reality of women who are attacked, and raped, where the onus lies on them to provide the burden of proof. They are asked what they did , what they wore, how they behaved and come from a place of having to not only defend their position, but also to prosecute the guilty party at such a huge emotional expense to their mental wellbeing.

The spiral of anxiety that Emma sinks into is totally believable, she guesses and second guesses herself over and over , to the extent that she hides her research into her attacker, the killer known as The Hairdresser. the only difference between her and the other victims is that she was left alive.

And then, then she takes in a package and her whole world turns upside down….

To reveal any more would be to risk spoiling the journey for the potential reader, however, what I can say is that this is a thriller on the level of ‘Silence Of The Lambs’ for me, it is a breathless, agonsigin descent into Emma’s stream of consciousness which brings the reader achingly close to the trauma she has undergone. With moments of pure, goosebump inducing terror, this is a book, and an author, to keep a keen eye on!

About the author…

Sebastian Fitzek is Germany’s most successful author of psychological thrillers. His books have sold 12 million copies, been translated into more than twenty-four languages and are the basis for international cinema adaptations and theatre adaptations. Sebastian Fitzek was the first German author to be awarded the European Prize for Criminal Literature. He lives with his family in Berlin.

Links-https://www.sebastianfitzek.de/

Twitter @SebastianFitzek