Headlights, by CJ Leede
People are waking up beside the highway covered on blood, naked except for the skin of another person they have no memory of killing. There’s no apparent connection between any of the killers and the victims, except none of the killers can remember what happened and they all come to with a single human hair knotted around their tongue.
Agent Daniel Stansfield is running away again when an old colleague asks him to come back and help solve the case that stumped them all. But the case may be more personal than Daniel realizes.
The good: interesting serial killer plot, and the hair tied around the tongue was a nice hook. It’s first-person narration and Daniel tells the story like Chandler (though some of the sentence fragments work better read aloud than seen in print).
The bad: Hannah felt flat, like a feral pixie dream girl. Learning about her history didn’t really flesh her out properly. Daniel gets stuck in loops (denying the possibility of the supernatural, obsessing over Hannah) which gets repetitive and boring about halfway through book. There’s a cannibalistic sex scene I wasn’t prepared for that took me out of the book. I’m not one to kink-shame but something about this scene just had me gritting my teeth and wishing it was over. Then the plot gets infuriating. The ending alleviated a lot of this, but I only got that far because I hate to quit on a review copy.
When we finally get to the bottom of the Drifter murders it’s an interesting story, but feels unsatisfactory given the buildup, possibly because the first quarter is so procedural and everything after gets cosmic.
Folks, I hated this one. It had merits, and I’m sure it will end up on somebody’s Best of 2026 list, but the frustrations outweighed the appeal for me. Personally, I just wanted to go reread Sharp Teeth to cleanse my reading palate.
Did not enjoy, will not be surprised if it gets optioned as an Armie Hammer film.
Amazon | Bookshop.org
Disclaimer: I was provided with an eARC by the publisher via NetGalley at no cost to myself. The opinions above are my own.
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