In this fascinating & profoundly chilling account, Detective Kim Mager, a real-life version of Clarice Starling, reveals how she closed in on, and broke, one of Ohio's most infamous serial killers.
On September 13, 2016, in the small town of Ashland, Ohio, emergency dispatchers received a 911 call from a terrified woman who claimed to be kidnapped. The man holding her hostage was Shawn Grate, a serial killer whom the press later dubbed "The Ladykiller." A key to his conviction and death sentence were Grate's extensive recorded confessions-all extracted by one woman: Detective Kim Mager.
As an experienced specialist in sex offenses, Detective Mager was assigned to Grate's case upon his arrest. Grate immediately latched onto her, refusing to speak to any other law enforcement officers, convinced that he could somehow exercise his power over her in much the same way that he'd overpowered and controlled his female victims.
He was wrong.
Over a period of eight days, Mager conducted one interview after another, risking her life by sitting alone in the interview room with a malevolent predator. Using brilliant psychological strategy in a lethal game of wits, Mager successfully elicited his damning confessions to five murders, kidnapping, and multiple sexual assaults of women across Ohio.
Deeply personal and shocking, “A Hunger to Kill” takes readers behind the scenes of one of the most appalling criminal cases in American history from the woman who stopped his murderous rampage in collaboration with New York Times bestselling author Lisa Pulitzer.
"Just wow! Mager's retelling of her quest for justice in a little-known serial murder case puts true crime readers just where they want to be - deep inside a story that's wholly her own to tell. Propulsive and insightful."
Gregg Olsen, New York Times bestselling author of If You Tell
"The book is compelling ... it takes readers inside the difficult, delicate, disorienting act of earning a killer's trust so that his victims can have justice. In an era of facile amateur recaps, this has real value. And while there are few facets of law enforcement that haven't been dramatized .... [Magers] manages to demonstrate the real emotional costs of competent, painstaking police work."
