Review of "The Killing Gene" by Victer Hugo Basurco

​Score: 92/100 (9.2 out of 10)

Well, this was interesting! And a bit unexpected.

Recently, there's been a morbid fascination with serial-killers and murderers in pop culture.
They dominate Netflix documentaries, true crime podcasts, YouTube breakdowns, Reddit rabbit holes, and all those late-night "what really happened?" conversations people probably should not be having right before bed.

But what if science could one day identify a genetic mutation linked to violent, psychopathic behavior before it fully manifests? Would it be moral? Ethical? Intrusive? Not much different from racial profiling? Do the ends justify the means? And could it actually work?

That unsettling idea gives The Killing Gene its hook, blending serial killer intrigue with speculative genetics and turning the novel into a thriller about not just who kills, but whether evil itself might be hiding in the human code. Furthermore, if we have the means to intervene, should we? Why wouldn't we?

The Killing Gene by Victer Hugo Basurco is a science-driven crime thriller.

At the center of the story is Dr. Howard Kensington, whose life is shattered by repeated family tragedy. He and his wife lose both of their children to cancer, and then his wife dies by suicide. That grief becomes the engine for his career. Howard throws himself into genetics research, becomes wealthy, and founds the company Genican, hoping scientific breakthroughs can spare other families similar suffering. But in building Genican, he also invites investors and power brokers into the project, including the influential Lynn family, whose money and reach quietly shape the company from the inside.

One of Howard’s key employees is Tatyana Mirzo, a brilliant but emotionally complicated scientist with a reckless, messy past. Her chapter gives the novel a lot of personal texture. She is ambitious, wants to be taken seriously for her mind rather than her looks, and carries lingering trauma from her youth. Her backstory matters because it eventually intersects with the murders in a way that feels both personal and thematic.

The novel then spends a great deal of time tracing the history of the Lynns, particularly Malcolm Lynn, whose past is crucial. Malcolm is shown as wealthy, entitled, violent, and warped in his view of women. A formative incident in Alaska, involving a sex worker named Winnie and a brutal retaliatory attack, effectively serves as the origin point for the family’s long shadow of violence. Malcolm escalates from there into murder, cover-up, and predation, while the family’s power and money help bury consequences. His servant and fixer, Mr. Beavers, becomes an accomplice-like presence in this hidden world. The book actually doesn't keep Malcolm's villainy a secret or a mystery for long. We actually follow him as he commits heinous murderers and sexual assaults.

The story then shifts to Kevin Lynn, who works at Genican and is tied to Howard’s research team. Kevin is cold, socially strange, misogynistic, and shaped by a poisonous upbringing. He grows up absorbing Malcolm’s worldview and the family’s rot. Yet the novel complicates him by making him both suspicious and, eventually, not exactly what he first appears to be. He looks like the obvious answer to the murder mystery for much of the book, and the novel leans into that suspicion heavily.

Parallel to all of this is the ongoing serial murder thread, centered on the Red Hook murders. Victims, many of them women, are found with a recurring pattern of violence that includes attacks involving the mouth and missing teeth. The murders echo Malcolm’s earlier brutality and create a genealogical and symbolic trail from his crimes to the present. The book gradually links scattered attacks, old crimes in Alaska, and Red Hook-era killings into one sprawling web.

As Genican’s research progresses, Howard and his team edge toward identifying what they call the “killing gene.” At the same time, journalist Maggie Rally starts digging into both Genican and the Red Hook murders. Maggie is not just there to move the plot. She becomes one of the book’s moral and investigative engines, pushing questions the scientists and police either cannot or will not ask. She sees both the promise and terrifying misuse potential of the discovery, including the idea that genetic science could be weaponized socially, politically, or even militarily.

We know that Kevin and Howard get a lot of the credit and attention as protagonists, but Maggie is really the main protagonist of the book when you really stop to think about it. Maggie is the one trying to solve these murders and stop people from dying. In most other mystery novels, she'd be the detective who cracks the case.

The murders in this book are extremely violent and disturbing. A lot of this features nails and other objects jabbed down peoples' throats, mostly women.

We are no strangers to fiction and non-fiction featuring extreme violence and brutality, but this was a bit shocking considering how the Introduction seemed to be buttering us up for something a bit more wholesome: a scientific discovery that might benefit mankind. This is almost like saying, "Hey, everyone, I have this cool discovery that will improve the American diet" then mutilating a living animal in front of us to extract a health-containing substance from it. Wouldn't that be jarring? Perhaps an introduction like this should probably be excluded and be left at the end of the book (in the Afterword ). There's also a ton of sex and sexual violence in this book as well, including featuring some of the major characters like Tatyana.

We get that this somewhat follows the thinking that there's a genetic predisposition for certain people to just be psychotically sadistic and kill-crazy. Well, it is morbidly fascination. There's just something about it that doesn't sit well with us. We don't know if it's just how matter-of-fact or routine these murders and assaults are portrayed or what. Perhaps that's the point. Malcolm is portrayed as being pretty much programmed to this, desensitized to it.

Oh, by the way... there's some really odd framing and weirdness with this book. It's hard to explain. So, like, there's a scene in which Malcolm gets the top of his p*nis bit off by Winnie. It's kinda a big deal for a couple of pages. The town doctor then jokes, "Looks like you got a little trim off the top." That's admittedly a good one.

However, it almost seems like this p*nis biting thing gets swept under the rug and forgotten. Like, Malcolm barely sells it afterward. He's not hobbling in pain, icing it, or anything like twenty pages later. It's like he stubbed his toe or something, nothing more. It's somewhat bizarre.

Also, you know what else is bizarre? Why is this book in present-tense? It reads... weird.

That choice gives The Killing Gene a strange, sometimes unstable feel. On one hand, present tense can make a thriller feel immediate, like everything is unfolding right in front of us in real time. On the other hand, this book is constantly jumping through backstory, family history, murder history, scientific exposition, and generational trauma. So instead of making the story feel sharper or more urgent, the present tense sometimes makes it feel oddly floaty and unnatural, like we are being told a gruesome family dossier in the tone of something happening live on the evening news.

That mismatch is part of what makes the book feel so unusual.

Also, there are sections of this book that switch from prose and dialogue to something more akin to a script. Out of nowhere, clipped speaker labels will pop up in exchanges that feel less novelistic and more like blocking on a page. It is not constant, but it happens enough that we noticed it. Ethan Richards would occasionally do this at the beginning of his books, and we don't tend to be fans of that style in a novel.
To be fair, that approach can occasionally speed things up. In confrontation scenes, it can create a brisk, back-and-forth rhythm. But more often, it makes the book feel less polished and less immersive, as if it cannot quite decide whether it wants to be a crime novel, a television treatment, or a rough dramatic transcript.

This is not a sleek, elegantly controlled thriller. It is jagged. It is tonally erratic. It is sometimes lurid, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes awkward, and sometimes genuinely gripping. But it absolutely has a hook, and it absolutely has nerve. We may not love every stylistic choice Basurco makes, but we cannot accuse him of playing it safe.

Check it out on Amazon!