“The 20” by Sam Holland is all together a very solid read. I liked the plot, I liked the characters, their dynamics, etc. I thought the serial killer was a bit heavy handed in his manipulation but not to the point it was obnoxious. I even liked the killer. Or one of, at least.

I unfortunately did read the Dutch translated version… which was unconscionably bad at some point. I’m talking phrases in English translated literally into Dutch sentences that no Dutch speaking person would ever say. The word “mooijongen” (translated from “pretty boy”) does not exist. I googled it and everything.

That’s besides the point! (But it does fuel my disdain towards Dutch translated works)

The basic plot is that bodies turn up, numbered in some way or another and the numbers are counting down. There’s a connection made to a serial killer that has been incarcerated for over two decades. It’s up to the police to figure out what and who.

Standard police procedural thriller.

I truly enjoyed it, until one specific point.

SPOILERS FOR “THE 20” AND “TABULA RASA” FOLLOWING THIS POINT

Everytime the plot twist of a thriller is “jealous woman brought to the brink of insanity”, an angel loses its wings. What’s even more infuriating to me is that it was snuck in there in the epilogue.

I just don’t think I’ve ever had a positive reaction to this type of twist.

There’s a Belgian TV-series, a thriller, that’s pretty good for the most part. It’s called “Tabula Rasa”. It’s about a woman who has lost her ability to form long term memories after getting into a car crash. “Tabula Rasa” is one of those series that makes you want to ignore that there is a second part. The first part has the main character move into a remote house with her family to recover from her accident. She starts noticing her daughter is acting really really strange, her husband is acting distant, and she strikes up conversations with some random guy. All the while she keeps forgetting every piece of new informations she receives from the point of the car accident on. But, she does manage to figure things out. Her husband is cheating on her, the guy she’s been talking to is actually the driver of the car that hit her, wracked with guilt, and her daughter died in that car accident.

It’s so good actually, the conflicting morals of the family, of the husband, of the driver etc. Because of the main character’s short term memory loss, her husband had to tell her their daughter had died over and over again, and she’d be in such a state that it just made the mental block worse. Until it was just decided that, until she was in a better place in her recovery, they would pretend the daughter was still alive. The daughter we the audience were familiar with, who was deconstructing into a more and more demonic type of behaviour, was just an elaborate hallucination of the MC. And the husband, never really allowed to mourn his child, lost his way a bit and cheated on her with an ex-girlfriend.

(Also apparently a big part of the show is that she was the last one to see the guy the MC was cheating with and the investigation surrounding that… Completely forgot about that. I’m not even having an “oh yeah, that’s righ!” moment, it just lef my brain completely).

The second part of the show, to me, is everything after that point. The MC is committed into a psychiatric hospital where she continues to unravel her lost memories.

The conclusion to the story is that the guy that hit her, wasn’t even fully responsible. No, the husband’s ex-girlfriend had picked him up and knocked him unconscious. Then waited with the guy in a car on a road perpendicular on the road the MC was driving. Must’ve done some fast math because she weighed down the gas pedal of the guy’s car, sent him off and that’s how he hit the MC’s car. And I’m not talking about oh, it’s 10 m to the T-intersection. It was at least half a kilometer on a hill in the dark. This instantly took me out of the story. But then it turns out the MC knows the ex-girlfriend. Because she’s a psychologist in the psych ward who’s there to finish the job. Because the husband left the ex-girlfriend for the MC.

All of this… because of a jealous woman driven to insanity. I hate the trope, I hate that even women’s wrongs still have to center a male character. I hate how much it plays into “my crazy ex” hihi hahas. But more than that, it sucks that a more interesting conclusion was lost to a trope.

Back to “The 20”, the conclusion that one of Cole’s surviving victim’s was an accomplice in the epilogue of the book (also a psychologist interviewing the MC and a “seductress”… ) really bummed me out. It didn’t need to be there. It was alluded to in maybe three instances throughout the entire rest of the book. It could very much be scrapped and it would’ve changed nothing to the rest of the book. Adam Bishop already had to confront his trust issues with his wife, there was already a satisfying reveal of who the killer was. Elijah Cole’s connection to the outside world was explained enough with how much of a grip he had on the guard’s in the prison system.

I just don’t understand why. Where does the urge to have a “jealous ex did it” reveal come from? Is it like a “the buttler did it” thing?

Final Storygraph score was 3/5.