Review: The Naturalist by Andrew Mayne book review from Fourth Dimension Club

Siddu Nirvana
Sep 19, 2018
2 min read

Updated: Aug 27, 2021

This highly engaging thriller and entertaining murder mystery book The Naturalist by Andrew Mayne is the first book in the naturalist series.

Author

Andrew Mayne is a magician, illusion designer, author, and filmmaker. Having written and produced over fifty books, DVDs, and manuscripts on magic, he is considered one of the most prolific magic creators of the last decade. He is also the publisher of iTricks.com and the host of the Weird Things podcast, one of the top 25 Natural Science podcasts on iTunes. Known for his off-beat magic that mixes science and mystery, his illusions include shrinking his body to two-feet tall and drinking liquid nitrogen.

Review

I got to read this book early before publishing as part of the kindle first program by Amazon. This book drastically turned my focus onto books and reading. I started reading this book in the morning and finished it by evening of the same day. The story line and writing is pretty good and thoroughly kept me engaged. Of course, i jumped into other thriller and murder mystery novels right after reading this book, such is the impact the book had on me. Andrew Mayne is a natural story teller and this book is one of the most recommended book to my friends in thriller/murder mystery genre from me.

There’s a clarity that arrives when life forces you into a binary situation.

Dr. Theo Cray is a professor of biogenics and uses computer models to determine how biological systems react given certain criteria. He is smart, funny and little nerdy as well. A little field trip to Montana suddenly pushes him into a murder investigation when he comes to know about his former student was murdered by a grizzly bear. Dr. Theo is expert in finding patterns in midst of chaos. While seeing the photos and details of the murder, he realizes that the murder might not be done by a grizzly bear as every one else is believed to be. He started investigating on his own when no one believed in his theory. How Dr. Theo investigated and encountered the dangerous serial killer who was lurking under the radar and killing people for almost 30 years by making it look like animal killings is the story.

Killing is a solution to a problem. Murder is something you do because you want to. You divorce your wife because you don’t love her. You murder her because you hate her.

The writing is brilliant and engaging. Mayne took special care about the minute details of the story. The science details and vocabulary is smartly written and reading them is fun. The twists are actually entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable. The story paces at a steady and consistent speed keeping the readers hooked. While this is my first murder mystery or thriller novel, I'm glad that I picked this book and very much excited to read the next book in the naturalist series. I highly recommend this book for all the thriller book fans and normal book readers as well.

My rating: 4/5