Notes on an Execution – Danya Kukafka

100-Word (or Less) Synopsis: Ansel is hours away from being executed for the murder of several women, but he has a final plan to manipulate his way out of lethal injection.

Expectation: A race against the clock of will they or won’t they sensibilities. But with death instead of love.

Reality: A slow-burn character study that takes a few strategic pivots from the usual serial killer narrative.

Recommended For: Fans and detractors of the mystery thriller genre. Both camps will find something to like.

Why I Read It: It was one of the most buzzed about books on #Bookstagram upon its release.

My Take:

I went into this book with tempered expectations. Several people had read and loved it, which is usually a red flag for me that I’ll probably find it middling (who doesn’t love a dissenter?).

After the first chapter — our introduction to Ansel Packer, a serial murderer who is hours away from execution — my expectation of disappointment felt well founded, but then Danya Kukafka went and flipped the script.

While we still received aspects of the formulaic death row story in Ansel, he was merely the vessel to introduce us to a small group of memorable characters — all women — that existed in Ansel’s orbit in various capacities.

This made “Notes” a serial killer story with a feminist lens, more focused on empowerment than giving sympathy for the devil.  

While flashbacks and alternative points of view are often fashionable for mystery thrillers, they rarely work as effectively as they do here. Why? Because Kukafka knows something they many authors in this genre forget — without character development your reader won’t care.

Each of our three main characters — Lavender, Ansel’s mother; Saffy, a detective; and Hazel, Ansel’s sister-in-law — were interesting and complex, so when a few of the plot points were stretched thin — mainly the introduction of Blue — I had faith that Kukafka would stick the landing.

Yes, the “mystery” gets solved, the connections between the characters is explained and Ansel tries to explain himself. Yet those aren’t the aspects that made this a satisfying conclusion.

To me, it was the subtle yet effective commentary on modern criminal justice, the morbid fascination with murderers and true crime and the dissection of how men leverage power to try and intimidate and influence women.

While there are women as victims in this story, our main characters are victimized more by their own feelings — of shame, regret, guilt and heartache — which is the rawest and most relatable experience of them all.

Narrated by Jim Meskiman as Ansel and Mozhan Marno, as the female leads, it’s an easy way to absorb an often heavy story. Meskiman has the least amount of airtime, but he makes it count by given Ansel a few layers that are exposed in flashbacks but have relevancy to his last hours alive.

Marno didn’t create a lot of differentiation between Lavender, Saffy and Hazel outside of what Kukafka wrote for them, but she sure brought the emotion — specifically in Lavender’s backstory (chapter 2) and the close of Hazel’s story. She helped you feel their experiences.  

Rating (story): 4/5 stars

Rating (narration): 4/5 stars

Formats: Audiobook (library loan)

Dates read: February 23 – February 27, 2022

Multi-tasking: Good to go. I mostly cleaned and exercised while listening.