The Butcher Game

The Butcher Game is a 2024 horror/thriller novel by author and true crime podcast host Alaina Urquhart. It is the sequel to her 2021 novel The Butcher and the Wren and the second entry in the Dr. Wren Muller series. Like the first book in the series, The Butcher Game alternates between the perspectives of forensic pathologist Wren Muller and serial killer Jeremy Rose. After the events of The Butcher and the Wren, Jeremy is on the run from the New Orleans Police Department. He travels to Massachusetts, where he spent summers as a teenager, to continue his killing spree as Wren works with Detective John Leroux to hunt Jeremy. Wren faces an unfamiliar environment, as well as unfriendly and territorial small-town police departments. The novel explores justice, revenge, power, obsession, trauma, and ethics.

This guide refers to the 2024 Zando Kindle edition. 

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death, graphic violence, sexual violence, child abuse, physical abuse, and mental illness.

Plot Summary

The novel opens with a brief Prologue from the perspective of Philip Trudeau, a childhood friend of serial killer Jeremy Rose. Philip, who is now a pastor, still lives in the Massachusetts town in the Berkshires where an adolescent Jeremy and his family used to vacation. As Philip watches the news revealing Jeremy as the Bayou Butcher serial killer from New Orleans, he worries that his teenage past with Jeremy will come back to haunt him.

Meanwhile, in New Orleans, Dr. Wren Muller is still getting over her most recent encounter with Jeremy, who kidnapped and attempted to kill her (as depicted in the flashbacks in The Butcher and the Wren). Suffering nightmares, she takes a leave of absence from her work as a forensic pathologist, but she worries that healing won’t be possible until Jeremy is behind bars, facing justice for his heinous crimes. When she agrees to search Jeremy’s house one more time with Leroux, she is haunted by her traumatic memories there.

At the same time, Jeremy travels north to West Virginia to retrieve the emergency kit that he buried years ago. He also kills a man who offers him a ride and assumes the man’s identity. Jeremy continues north to Massachusetts and returns to the Berkshires, breaking into empty homes to prepare to enact his plan to lure Wren to him.

Wren receives a call from Corinne, a friend from college who works for the police department in the town of Salem, Massachusetts. The body of a woman was found outside of a New Orleans-themed bakery, which Corinne worries could be a sign that Jeremy is active in Salem. Wren agrees to come north with her husband, Richard Muller, to study the victim and assess if the violence is Jeremy’s work. Wren is nervous to approach Jeremy but wants to make sure that Jeremy faces justice for his crimes.

In Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Jeremy murders a couple at the ruins of an old mansion. On them, he carves images of Wren’s bracelet, which he stole from Wren and posed on one of his victims in The Butcher and the Wren. Jeremy scatters southern magnolias around the town, as those were Wren’s wedding flowers. He then kidnaps a woman from a local bar and hunts her in the woods near the abandoned fairgrounds before murdering her, too. After her slaying, Jeremy arrives on Philip Trudeau’s doorstep and demands to stay with him, threatening to ruin Philip’s reputation if he says no. Jeremy was there when Philip was drunk driving and hit a young woman. Jeremy insisted that this incident would ruin Philip’s reputation, so instead of calling 911 and trying to save her, Philip let Jeremy drag the girl to the woods and murder her. Jeremy then buried her body with Philip’s school ID as potential blackmail. Now, Jeremy brings up the incident, threatens Philip’s family, and offers Philip his stash of emergency money in exchange for staying at Philip’s home and getting Philip’s help.

Wren and Richard arrive in Massachusetts and receive a call from Detective John Leroux, letting them know that two bodies found in western Massachusetts may be victims of Jeremy. Leroux is getting on the next flight north. Wren arrives in Salem and examines the body that Corinne described. Wren doesn’t believe this to be Jeremy’s doing: The victim’s injuries aren’t consistent with Jeremy’s usual methods, so Wren asks about the victim’s romantic history. Corinne mentions a couple of ex-boyfriends, including someone named Phil. Wren tells her to follow up.

After a visit to one of Salem’s iconic graveyards and a troubling tarot reading from a local shopkeeper, Wren and Richard travel to their rental cottage in Great Barrington. It feels like a peaceful town, which upsets Wren because she knows Jeremy won’t let it stay that way. Leroux arrives and has dinner with Wren, showing her crime scene photos, including the carved symbol of her bracelet on a victim from the ruins. Though Wren and Leroux try to convince the local police to collaborate with them, the police are reluctant to narrow their search for suspects to only Jeremy.

Jeremy lures a woman away from a lake party and gets her onto a boat. He takes the boat out on the lake and demands that the woman jump out and swim to shore, threatening her with his knife. As she swims, he follows on the boat. She makes it to shore, but he chases her down and kills her anyway.

The police receive an anonymous tip about a body at the lake at the same time that three teenagers find a human heart in the boat Jeremy used. Wren examines the body, finding that the woman’s heart was carved out with some skill, hinting at Jeremy’s involvement; this still doesn’t persuade the local police to be more helpful. 

Meanwhile, at Philip’s house, Philip is angry at Jeremy for forcing him to help position the body at the lake and to make the anonymous tip call. Jeremy makes Philip place a second call to the police to lead them to a body at the abandoned fairgrounds.

Wren and Leroux join the police at the fairgrounds. When the police mention the scattered magnolias in passing, Wren realizes that Jeremy is toying with her. She follows the scent of death and uncovers the body of a woman with something in her eye—a piece of paper with Richard’s name on it. Wren panics. She calls Richard, but he doesn’t answer. She texts him and receives a text back that Jeremy has him.

Jeremy and Philip stake out Wren’s rental house. Philip pretends to be a solar panel salesman at the door while Jeremy sneaks inside. They then attack Richard, who puts up a fight but is eventually injected with a paralytic. After Richard’s phone rings, Jeremy texts Wren back.

Wren receives further texts from Richard’s phone. One states that Richard is in the woods. The police devise a plan to send one unit to Wren’s rental house, one to the woods, and another to a third location that an informant allegedly close to Jeremy has disclosed. At her rental house, Wren watches body cam footage of the police arresting Jeremy in the basement of Philip’s house. 

As Jeremy hears the police arrive, he realizes that Philip betrayed him. As he’s being arrested, he’s happy to imagine Wren’s reaction to seeing Richard’s body. While Leroux loads Jeremy into the police car, Philip taunts Jeremy, saying that Jeremy made a mistake entering Philip’s territory. Jeremy claims that he stashed Richard’s body near where they buried the woman they ran over years ago, but it turns out that Philip found and moved her body years ago. Jeremy then realizes that Philip has his own depraved and violent desires, which is why he was so eager to help with Richard’s murder.

Wren watches in horror as the police retrieve Richard’s body from the woods. Weeks later, Wren struggles with her grief as she receives the full autopsy report. She goes home to have pizza with her best friend, but Leroux interrupts. He tells her that they must review the autopsy report together because Jeremy didn’t kill Richard alone. Leroux thinks that Philip was present. Jeremy has put only two names on his allowed visitor list in prison: his lawyer and Wren. Wren agrees to talk to Jeremy to find out what happened to Richard.