Book Feature & Review – Zanker by Peter Maeck

It’s Friday! Time for a book feature – this is releasing next week and if you like mysteries, then this is the book for you.

Thanks to GetRed PR and to the author for the gifted copy in exchange for my honest review

ZANKER: MURDER IS ACADEMIC – Peter Maeck (Releasing June 13th, 2023)

Book Description:

In award-winning poet-playwright-photographer Peter Maeck’s debut novel, a capital crime in academia spurs an investigative journalist’s quest for truth, justice, and a spot on the New York Times Bestseller list.

When revered Ivy League college president Dr. Amos Loeb is murdered, prime suspicion falls upon an alumnus who has raged against the president’s admission of women to this historically all-male institution. Loeb, as a survivor of Auschwitz, a renowned scholar, and a heroic humanitarian seemed a very unlikely target for assassination. But as his long-concealed personal misdeeds come to light, he is revealed to have been a far from perfect man, imperfect enough to suggest that several others in addition to the disgruntled alumnus could very well have wanted him dead.

The Loeb murder is baffling the local police when a journalist arrives in town to pursue his own investigation toward writing an account of the affair. This journalist, his ambition set on a Pulitzer Prize, produces the book Zänker in which he is both a focal character and narrator of events. As the former, he is less an objective reporter than an active player in the college community’s combustible social life, sparking interpersonal tensions before ultimately solving the case.

Zänker engrossingly answers the What if Donna Tartt of The Secret History and Inspector Clouseau of The Pink Panther had co-written Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood?

My Thoughts: 3.5/5 stars

I’m going to keep this review short and sweet, simply because this book is one to be experienced and go in with just the synopsis (if you even read it, I don’t always before starting a book). This was a very enthralling and captivating mystery and I really did enjoy how it all played out! The only reason this wasn’t a solid 4 stars was because there were just a couple places where I found my interest dwindling, but it could also just be because of the exhausting week I’ve had. That being said, it was never enough for me to set down the book permanently. There was just enough mystery and questions lingering in my mind that I had to see how it was going to end! I would definitely pick up more from this author in the future.