SINNER is a pretty good read. It's about religion and violence. In these pages, the past and present collide.

As a direct descendent of the 19th century vigilante gang, the Bald Knobbers, Ezekiel Woods, Jr. has been indoctrinated into a world ruled by violence and a literal interpretation of the Bible his entire life. Ezekiel spends his days trying to fit in as a grocery store clerk. He is constantly picked on by his co-workers. He spends his nights in a farmhouse cellar. He prepare's his captives' souls for their ultimate destiny. The captives have a choice between redemption and death.

All of the violence in this book is directed towards women. The women are seen as the "sinners." Ezekial thinks it's his duty to redeem the women of their sins. Things are going rather smooth for Ezekial until they aren't. He captures one woman, just to have her escape his clutches. He must recapture her, or else God will forsake him.

The writing is good. The characters are solid. There was a little lag in the story. The prose are pretty tight. All in all, it's a good solid read.

3/5 stars!

3/5 stars!

I was a little hesitant as I started reading this novel, as it is a not the usual thriller story line that I find myself drawn to. It didn't take long, however, for me to get sucked in and spending every free minute I could find reading this book.

Ezekiel, or Zeke, is a religious zealot who fancies himself to be a vigilante. He rids the earth of women who he deems filthy, immoral sinners.

The plot is mostly centralized around the experience of one of his victims as she is abducted, tortured, and attempts to break free and escape with her life. We also get a glimpse of another one of his victims, and some flashbacks onto Zeke's childhood, which help us understand how he came to be the man he is.

I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the story, all of the plot twists, and the unexpected ending. I highly recommend this book!

It was a chilling novel that could be happening now

Zeke is a religious fanatic from a long line of murderous child abusing nut jobs who seem to think they are on a mission from God to dole out retribution. With an affinity for torture and murder that could only be surpassed by Leatherface, Zeke is racking up the body count as he rids the world of "sinners" who of course are women. Not all women are so easily dispatched as Zeke find out the hard way when one in particular refuses to be his victim in a highly suspenseful heart stopping conclusion.

I received an advance reader copy of this book for review from netgalley.

Sinner by christopher Graves.

When I first started reading this book it started out well, showing missouri in the late 1800's. We see a bunch of religious zealots and their mob destruction of a woman was a powerful start to the book.
It quickly moves to present day pennsylvania and where our story takes place with the introduction of zeke and his stalking and kidnapping of Ann. Again it is promising and creepy how we see this person operates and I liked the introduction of Ann and her story.. I liked the interaction and even the stalking of her but quickly after that this book lost me. In general the plot of this book could be summed up in one sentence. A socially-awkward misogynist kidnaps and tortures women to death. Yes there are ties to the past and a nice reference to the "snake handling" church which just becomes a plot device to the torture and nothing else really. There also are flashback scenes that shows how his misogyny was developed but even with that I found it hard to connect to this story. Zekes character and his interaction with his victims was just one dimensional after awhile.Always talking in bible verse got old after awhile and I found myself struggling to finish the book. I am giving this book 2 stars as there are a few interesting scenes in the beginning and end of the book but it falls flat on character development and interaction of the main villain

I'm so the first person reviewing this, I even had to create a listing for it with the cover photo. Yey, look at me contributing to promotion of new authors world(or at least goodreads)wide. Christopher Graves' fiction debut Sinner was/is a screenplay, a some award winning on e too. Not sure what came first, probably screenplay, but either way this book sort of reads like one. It's a movie of a book, fast paced, action driven. The plot is your basic serial killer thriller, in this case religious fanaticism is the propellant. The narrative splits between the past and present, the former being absolutely horrific enough to produce the latter, psyche isn't strong enough to survive such terrors as a child and become a well adjusted adult. Throw in a strong female lead, the sort the reader can cheer for to survive and it's a regular by numbers thrill machine. Took me a while to get into (though this might be because I started it late at night and barely awake), but then there was enough going on to draw me in. Whatever the book occasionally lacked in sophistication of narrative and style, it tended to make up for in relentless pacing and realistic descriptions, dialogues and situations. It's definitely an actioneer, in fact maybe slightly too much so for my taste, but was plenty entertaining and for the first fiction effort that's pretty good. Thanks Netgalley.