The Butcher and the Wren - Alaina Urquhart
Published in 2022 by Zando, New York, NY
256 pages
ISBN: 9781638930143
Psychological thrillers and mystery novels have always been one of my favorite genres of fiction. In high school, I devoured countless thriller novels that pitted a serial killer against a troubled, but stubborn detective. Drawn in by the classics such as Sherlock Holmes and fed throughout my high school days by authors such as Ted Dekker, crime-based fiction has always captivated me with its dramatic tension between characters and edge-of-your-seat storytelling.
I’m not the only one who possesses a fascination with crime-centered stories. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in the genre of true crime, spawning an endless stream of content in a wide array of mediums, including documentaries, TV shows, books, and podcasts. Arguably kicked into high gear in 2014 by the podcast Serial, the true crime genre has exploded in popularity, as four of the top Apple podcasts are firmly within the genre.
The fascination with evil is often cited as a prime motivator of the drive to consume true crime content. This fascination has spanned centuries; from the public executions of the medieval and early modern era to the detective stories of the 1950s, we can’t seem to get enough true crime content. It’s an alluring genre, as it often has a clear protagonist and antagonist, rising and falling action punctuated by a climax, and often contains clues and evidence for the listener or reader to piece together to solve a complex puzzle. Despite its tendency to trivialize the trauma of the victim, glorify the killer, highlight white female victims over victims with marginalized identities, and stigmatize mental illness, true crime is a genre that I still find myself avidly consuming, especially through documentaries and podcasts.
Alaina Urquhart is one of the hosts of the immensely popular true crime podcast, Morbid. Each week, Alaina (along with her niece, Ash Kelley) takes the listener through the details of a true crime case as she utilizes her knowledge as an autopsy technician to paint a vivid picture of the crime scenes. Balancing attentive narration with witty banter, the duo has amassed an expansive following, consistently propelling the show into the top podcasts on both Apple and Spotify.
My wife was the one who hooked me on the Morbid podcast, and while I rarely listen to it in my own time, Morbid has become a staple of many of our road trips. I find their episodes on haunted and supernatural locations to be particularly interesting (truth be told, I’m much more a fan of a good ghost story or fictional mystery than a true crime aficionado), so I can see how they have amassed such an immense and loyal following.
Thus, when Alaina announced that she was publishing a novel, much of her fervent audience waited in anticipation of its release. In her 2022 debut novel, The Butcher and the Wren, Alaina Urquhart provides a crime thriller set within the darkness of a Louisiana bayou.
Overview:
A serial killer is loose within the dark, swampy waters of Louisiana. This disturbed killer named Jeremy abducts and tortures his victims before setting them loose as he slowly stalks them throughout the bayou. As more bodies pile up in Jeremy’s wake, the authorities always seem to be two steps behind him as he continues to taunt them with cryptic clues.
But forensic pathologist Dr. Wren Muller is hot on his tail. She’s never let a case go unsolved, and with her extensive medical knowledge, she finds ever more revealing clues to the killer’s identity. Refusing to let go of this case, Wren believes she knows where Jeremy will strike next. His actions are growing increasingly bold with each passing day, and Wren finds herself wrapped up in an intricate game of cat-and-mouse. But as she continues to hunt for this dangerous killer, will she end up as the hunted instead?
Commendations:
There are a few aspects of the novel that are worth commending. The narrative structure of the book bounces back and forth between the protagonist and antagonist with each chapter, slowly revealing how they are connected. This allows the reader to get into each character’s head and gradually put the pieces together regarding how they are connected. As such, the twist that reveals the main characters’ relationship comes as a surprise. The twist at the end is a shock as well, as Urquhart ends the novel on a cliffhanger, leaving the reader wondering what will happen next.
Most strikingly, Urquhart’s experience as an autopsy technician shines through in this work. She is knowledgeable of the human body (especially in decay) and the process of examining bodies, as she lays these facts out in meticulous detail. This lends a unique medically-focused perspective to the typical thriller novel protagonist.
Critique:
However, there are several fundamental issues with this book. First of all, to put it bluntly, the book is poorly written. This is one of the most disappointing aspects of the novel, especially since Alaina is an incredibly gifted storyteller and can easily captivate an audience when recounting true crime events. When it comes to translating this ability into an engaging work of fiction, however, it falls completely flat.
On one hand, part of this problem can be attributed to Urquhart’s editors, who very clearly let her down through this book. The book is riddled with spelling errors and awkward phrases, as well as an overabundance of adverbs. The number of times that the characters “flick” various objects on and off or “finger” an object in search of something is, quite frankly, ridiculous, as you can find these phrases repeated several times in a single paragraph.
Additionally, the writing is primarily telling the readers what’s happening and how the characters are feeling, rather than showing them. The prose often seems overly cold and detached, and the dialogue is often choppy, contrived, and unnatural. While Urquhart assuredly has a vast knowledge of true crime cases, she shoehorns the history of real-life serial killers and villains from horror movies into the narrative, which is often awkwardly inserted into the dialogue.
Furthermore, there are a large number of plotholes that are never resolved, as well as loose ends that are never tied up. This is especially apparent in the twist ending of the book, which raises more questions than answers. While part of this might be an attempt to set up another reveal in a sequel, it seems to be more of a convenient plot device to get the characters out of a tight spot. Even if a novel ends on a cliffhanger, it tends to have a self-contained resolution still to satisfy the reader who has invested so much time into the narrative. However, The Butcher and the Wren lacks this key component, which makes for a rather deflating experience.
Additionally, the way the characters are written is a central problem in the novel. Throughout the novel, the main characters are one-dimensional and lack any character arc whatsoever. They do not change in any meaningful way throughout the novel; who they are at the beginning is exactly who they are at the end. Wren is smug and self-satisfied at her knowledge of human anatomy, while Jeremy is also overly-pretentious, and simply evil for the sake of being evil. One of the central twists of the novel doesn’t serve to change the protagonist but rather reveals additional information about her already-established identity.
The reader is given little to no background to the characters or motivation for their actions. At the most, we are given a small vignette from Jeremy’s childhood which attempts to give a grounding for his disturbed behavior. After a deer has been fatally injured, his father instructs Jeremy to kill the deer out of mercy. The account is lengthy and detailed in its depiction of the suffering deer and its ultimate demise, which is supposed to give a bit of explanatory power to Jeremy’s fixation on the suffering of others. Yet, as someone who grew up in a rural environment where hunting was the norm and this was a fairly common experience, I found this motivation to be incredibly weak.
The way the characters interact with each other is also a glaring issue. The dialogue is often stilted and awkward, as the characters don’t speak and interact with each other naturally. Rather than fully-fleshed out characters who have wishes, gaols, quirks, aspirations, and nuances, the main characters in this book are ultimately one-dimensional set pieces who are only set in place to move the plot forward. Additionally, several side characters are introduced throughout the book only to be discarded as quickly as they came, never to be seen again. None of the characters have any backstory or explanation for why they behave in particular ways, which makes it difficult to sympathize or root for them.
Part of this is explained by the limitations imposed by the strict structural organization of the book, which invariable alternates between Wren and Jeremy’s perspectives. This format, while attempting to draw us into the minds of both characters, ultimately becomes repetitive, especially when Jeremy’s chapters are only three pages while Wren’s are more than three times longer. The book is written in the present tense, often suddenly shifting between a first-person point of view and a third-person omniscient narrator. This too often works to the detriment of the narrative pace of the book, as scenes that have the potential to be terrifying are diffused of all tension.
For example, in Chapter 15, Jeremy is chasing two victims through the bayou, slowly stalking his prey in the darkness of the night. The victims are trying to find their way out of the bayou while avoiding Jeremy, but they cannot see anything. Rather than placing the reader in their shoes, Urqhart constantly shifts back to Jeremy’s perspective, reminding us of his location in relation to the victims, as well as telling us that Jeremy can see perfectly well in the dark with his night-vision goggles. Thus, when the scene comes to a climactic end, instead of coming as a shock, we see exactly how it happens, step by step. We as readers are constantly reminded of what is happening the entire time and exactly where each character is in the scene, thus dissolving any sense of tension.
Finally, while there was a huge amount of potential in setting this novel within the naturally spooky city of New Orleans, it is clear that Urqhart didn’t quite utilize it to its full potential. In fact, in one of the Morbid podcasts, Alaina admits that she never visited New Orleans before writing the book, relying instead on Google Maps for her depictions of places. This lack of local knowledge becomes readily apparent throughout the book through a litany of inaccurate descriptions, such as when she refers to the regions of Louisana as counties instead of parishes. As another example, the serial killer, Jeremy, keeps some of his victims in the basement of his house that sits right on the edge of a bayou in Southern Louisiana. As someone who grew up in a similar coastal town in the swampy South, it is exceptionally rare for houses to have basements of any kind, since these areas are prone to massive flooding at even the smallest rainshower.
While there are small nods to New Orleans culture and life, they remain incredibly stereotypical and surface-level (humid air, swampy waters, the above-ground cemeteries, tarot reading in the French Quarter, etc.). None of these deepen the story in any meaningful way but rather serve again as set pieces to try to give the book a more spooky vibe. These may seem like small details, but when you are setting a book within a specific place with its own unique culture, it is vitally important to put more effort into actually stepping into the deep history and geography of the place. Rather, it seems like the setting was chosen because of Louisiana’s stereotypically spooky connotations, which ultimately does a disservice to the unique cultural heritage of the region.
Conclusion:
Overall, while The Butcher and the Wren had so much potential to be a gripping thriller novel, it is unfortunately bogged down by awkward writing, one-dimensional characters, and an unsatisfying ending. While Urqhart’s extensive knowledge of true crime and anatomy shines through in this book, it is not enough to save an otherwise routine crime thriller. I truly wanted to like the book, but couldn’t quite get there. The bones of a truly compelling thriller are all there, but they desperately needed to be fleshed out more.
It’s all the more disappointing because Urquhart is a gifted storyteller on her podcast, Morbid. Regardless of your perspective on the ethical issues of creating true crime content, Morbid’s rabid fanbase is drawn in to listen each week by Alaina and Ashley’s ability to convey the details of cases with narrative flair. She seems to be a genuinely lovely person, and she deserves more than what her editors and publishing team offered her on this work. If there are to be future installments in this series (as seems to be evident by the abrupt, cliffhanger ending), I truly hope that Alaina can find a stronger editor to help her refine these rough patches in the framework and writing of her novels.
I truly believe that, with time and practice, Alaina’s fiction can be truly compelling and engrossing to read. While it is not quite there yet in this novel, I am still excited to see how her writing develops as she continues to expand the world of The Butcher and the Wren. Until then, my wife and I will continue to listen to Alaina and Ashley recount true crime cases on our many roadtrips