Quick Take
- Narration: Nicol Zanzarella handles both the procedural tension and the slow-burn romance with real skill, giving Mason and Grace distinct vocal identities that hold across twelve hours.
- Themes: Psychic investigation, small-town secrets, lesbian romance threaded through serial-killer suspense
- Mood: Suspenseful and atmospheric with steady romantic warmth underneath
- Verdict: Gerri Hill at her most ambitious, combining a genuinely creepy mystery with a grounded love story in ways that serve both rather than compromising either.
I tend to be skeptical of genre mashups that stack supernatural elements onto crime procedurals. The seams usually show: the psychic gift either solves the mystery too easily and drains the suspense, or it is introduced and then sidelined, which makes the whole conceit feel decorative. Gerri Hill threads this needle in Gillette Park in ways I did not expect, and Nicol Zanzarella’s narration gives her the space to do it. I started this one late on a Wednesday evening, intending to listen for an hour before sleep, and found myself still awake at 1 a.m. with three hours gone.
Hill is among the most prolific writers in lesbian fiction, with nearly four decades of work behind her, and the reviewers who had read all or most of her catalog noted that Gillette Park felt like something new from her, a departure in ambition and atmosphere. Having read that before I started, I was prepared to be a little skeptical of the superlatives. The book earned them. The serial killer premise could easily have been background color for the romance, but Hill takes the investigation seriously enough that you never feel like the suspense is decorative.
What a Serial Killer Story Needs to Do Over Twelve Hours
The premise asks a lot of a listener’s patience. A serial killer has operated in Gillette Park for twenty-three years, striking two or three times annually, and the town has lived with this fact in that particular way that small communities sometimes absorb ongoing terror: not comfortably, but as a background condition of life. Mason Cooper, who has escaped the town and then returned, finds herself embedded in the investigation when the FBI brings in Dr. Grace Jennings, a psychic consultant.
Twenty-three years is a long time for a killer to operate without capture, and Hill is careful to establish why this has happened without resorting to procedural incompetence as an explanation. The corruption that protects the killer is specific and plausible, rooted in the way that small-town authority structures protect themselves. Sheriff Cooper, Mason’s uncle and boss, is one of the book’s more interesting secondary characters precisely because his resistance to outside help is not simply malice: it is the institutional self-protection of a man whose identity is bound up in the authority being questioned.
Grace Jennings and the Question of Belief
The psychic element could easily tip into eye-rolling territory, and Hill’s management of it is one of the things I found most impressive. Grace does not have cinematic visions on demand. Her gift is uncertain, exhausting, and sometimes wrong. She sees fragments and hears echoes rather than receiving convenient plot-advancing downloads. That uncertainty is what keeps the supernatural element integrated into the procedural tension rather than sitting outside it.
One reviewer noted some frustration with Mason’s occasional lapses in professional judgment, and this is a fair observation. A veteran LAPD detective probably would not react to certain crisis situations quite the way Mason does. But Hill is more interested in Mason as a specific person than as a generic competent cop, and the choices that seem professionally dubious are almost always emotionally legible. Mason is running from something as much as she is running toward solving a case, and that conflict gives the character texture that compensates for the occasional plausibility stretch.
The Romance That Does Not Rush
Gerri Hill’s readers know her for slow-burn romance, and Gillette Park delivers this in a context where the external threat makes the emotional stakes feel genuinely consequential rather than manufactured. Mason and Grace’s attraction develops against a backdrop of real danger, which means that the moments of tenderness have a quality of relief as well as desire.
Zanzarella is well-suited to this material. She gives Mason a slightly guarded vocal quality that softens perceptibly as the relationship develops, and Grace’s warmth is present from early on without becoming saccharine. The chemistry between the two characters is something that narrator performance can either support or undermine, and Zanzarella supports it consistently across twelve hours. The final sections of the book, where the mystery and the romance both reach their conclusions, are handled with the kind of emotional patience that a listener can tell comes from a narrator who trusted the material.
Who Should Listen and Who Should Know the Score
Readers who enjoy lesbian fiction but typically avoid supernatural or procedural elements should know that this book leans into both. The serial killer investigation is not background color for a romance: it is a genuine, sometimes graphic, always suspenseful plot driver that occupies equal real estate with the love story. If intense violence, even when not described gratuitously, is not something you want in your listening, adjust your expectations accordingly.
For readers who like their romance earned through shared danger and real obstacles, and who find the combination of mystery and psychic investigation compelling rather than gimmicky, this one offers twelve hours of genuinely invested storytelling. Hill wrote something different here, and it shows. Several longtime readers of her full catalog described this as among her best work, and that judgment holds up across the listening. The combination works because Hill invests equally in both elements rather than treating one as decoration for the other, and that balance is rare enough in genre-crossing work that it is worth acknowledging specifically. The care Zanzarella and Hill both bring to this material is evident in how it holds across a full twelve-hour listen.
Frequently Asked Questions
How graphic is the violence in Gillette Park? Is it suitable for readers who are sensitive to that content?
The book involves a long-running serial killer and ritual murders, and Hill does not sanitize this entirely. The violence is purposeful rather than gratuitous, but there are moments of genuine darkness. Readers with strong sensitivities to murder, predatory violence, or descriptions of victims should approach with some caution. Several reviewers described it as creepy and spooky rather than gorily explicit.
Is the psychic element of the story taken seriously, or is it played as ambiguous or skeptical?
Hill takes Grace’s gift seriously within the world of the novel rather than treating it as a contested or purely metaphorical element. However, Grace’s abilities are presented as imperfect and exhausting rather than conveniently omniscient, which keeps the supernatural from resolving the mystery on its own. The investigation still depends on conventional detective work alongside Grace’s contributions.
Does Gillette Park work as a standalone, or is it part of an ongoing Gerri Hill series?
It is a standalone novel. Mason and Grace’s story is complete within this book, and no prior knowledge of Hill’s other work is needed. Many reviewers who came to it as their first Gerri Hill novel found it fully satisfying on its own terms.
How does Nicol Zanzarella differentiate Mason and Grace in the narration?
Zanzarella gives Mason a slightly more guarded, controlled vocal register that softens as the romance develops, and Grace a warmer, more open quality from the start. Across twelve hours with dual protagonists, maintaining this distinction requires consistent character awareness, and Zanzarella manages it well. The romance reads as genuinely felt in large part because of how she distinguishes the two women’s voices.
