The Lion, The Lamb, The Hunted by Andrew E. Kaufman (Patrick Bannister #1)

The Lion, The Lamb, The Hunted is the first book I’ve read by the author Andrew E. Kaufman and let’s just say that I liked it so much that in the meantime I’ve read the second Patrick Bannister book, called Darkness & Shadows,  and his standalone paranormal thriller, While The Savage Sleeps.

The book is classified as a psychological thriller, but personally, I just found it a really good mystery. The plot is really well done and the writing flows smoothly and gets you where you want to go, with ease.

Patrick is a journalist, and a really good one at that. He is a crime reporter employed at the News World national magazine in California. The book starts with Patrick going back home to his mother’s funeral, where we learn that he simply hates to be with every fiber of his body and soul. His uncle, a rich and powerful senator, asks him to go to the house to pick up any stuff that he might want to take with him as a personal memento.

While Patrick is reluctant, he eventually goes to the house and gets a box with some books which also includes a necklace and a written note between the uncle and Patrick’s mom about a possible crime that they were both apparently involved in many years ago.

Patrick is a very good crime reporter, picks up the thread and basically doesn’t let it go until the shocking end that literally turns his life upside down. He learns of a kidnapping of a little boy in another town not really far away from where he is living, and the more he tries to discover, the more danger he seems to put himself into. Some people just don’t want him to learn the truth about what happened 3 decades ago.

I won’t give out more of the plot because it’s really worth reading all the twists and turns that come up every couple of pages with an open mind. Some people said that they figured out early on what really happened with the little boy. Personally, I didn’t see it until the time it was revealed and I’m glad because I got to enjoy the suspense of it all right to the last page.

The plot is really full of nail-biting twists and turns and you’re engaged all the way throughout. As for the characters, we soon learn that Patrick is what it’s called ‘damaged goods’ by some standards, both physically and psychologically. He is what we call a ‘bleeder’ through an illness discovered when he was but a little boy, whereby the tiniest scratch on his skin gets the blood gates flowing and he needs medication to stop the blood.

Psychologically he was abused by his mother all his life by a woman who not only didn’t have a heart to love him, but was also cruel to the max (getting him to overdose and keeping him medicated with valium for years are just a few things from the list of horrors that she put him under).

It is no surprise there that Patrick developed OCD and learned to escape the horrors through writing lists that would somehow ease his pain. No wonder he is currently visiting a psychologist just to figure out some of his feelings and learn that he was not guilty of anything because he was not loved by his mother.

Going back to his physical problem, I felt that it added an extra layer of suspense to the whole action part of the book. He did go through a lot, from the hunter (lion) becoming the hunted, and it was more than once that he narrowly escaped death. For example having to go through a bush of thorny plants, where others might get away with a few randomly placed scratches, he might literally bleed to death.

I really loved the writing style, it was engaging and not choppy or broken at all. The story was alternating between the present, with Patrick investigating the murder of the little Nathan, and the past, where we get glimpses of what horrors he had to go through all his life, right until he left home when he went to college.

I did like the way the past helped learning more about him and his actions in the present time.

Overall The Lion, The Lamb, The Hunted was a highly rewarding book as all the Andrew E Kaufman books are, and the only small complaint I have is about the ending. I just felt it was not the way I expected it and it was kind of rushed. However, I forgave this tiny blip knowing that I would pick up soon the second book in the Patrick Bannister series as I already had it on my iPad.