Wordhunter
A Novel
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3.8 • 23 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
An Amazon Best of the Year Pick
An utterly original and compulsively readable detective story about a woman who uses her uncanny ability to analyze words and speech patterns to help solve crimes.
Tattooed, pierced, and a bit of a mess, Maggie Moore is a surprising genius when it comes to words, a savant able to solve any linguistic puzzle. The top student in her forensic linguistics class, she’s tapped by local police to use her skills to decipher harrowing notes left by a stalker-turned-rapist—and succeeds brilliantly.
But when the daughter of a local mayor is abducted, Maggie isn’t sure she’s the right person to help the police solve the crime. Given what happened to her best childhood friend, Maggie just might be too close to this one.
Yet she knows the authorities in this rural south-Central Florida town cannot crack the case without her special skill. Along with her new best friend, a detective Jackson, Maggie begins to analyze the texts, emails, and verbal tics of various suspects . . . and comes to a disturbing conclusion that will rock this small community.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
True crime author Sands (Wealthy Men Only) makes an auspicious fiction debut with this crackling mystery centered on a Lisbeth Salanderesque savant. Raised in a rusting trailer in Central Florida, 20-something Maggie Moore sees her extraordinary way with words—she can identify nearly anyone based on their syntax and sentence structure—as her only ticket out of poverty. When her linguistics professor recognizes Maggie's talent and taps her to assist local police on a rape case, she helps nail the perp by decoding the notes he left at his crime scenes. Impressed, the cops enlist Maggie to track down Heidi Hemphill, the mayor's kidnapped daughter. As Maggie analyzes the linguistic habits of the lead suspects and makes quick friends with Det. Silas Jackson, she starts to notice eerie similarities between Heidi's case and that of Maggie's best friend, Lucy Tidwell, who disappeared years earlier. The more Maggie and Jackson dig, the more they worry that the culprit might be too powerful to touch—and that they've unwittingly affixed targets to their own backs. Sands nails the genius investigator formula on her first try, spinning Maggie into a memorable heroine and handing her an enthralling first case. This transfixes from the first page.
Customer Reviews
Writing not even good enough to be called “hack”
Worth no stars. How did this book ever get published? It reads—oh, I hate using that word—like a first draft of a retired school teacher who’d never studied writing but “always wanted to write a book!” The premise of forensic linguistics is the only interesting thing. But book quality does not depend on what they are about, but how they are about it. This book hasn’t a clue how to be about it. Save your money!
Sorry I wasted my time
Crappy plot, obscure framework. Author obviously stoking her ego at your expense.