Book Club Guide

Notes on an Execution

by Danya Kukafka · 2022 · Mystery & Thriller

Key themes

The serial killer who is never given his own voice — and what this withholding achieves
The women whose lives intersected with a killer — mother, sister-in-law, detective
True crime's usual fascination redirected toward the overlooked

About this book

On the night of his execution, a serial killer's life is reconstructed not through his own perspective but through the women connected to him — his mother, his sister-in-law, the detective who caught him. Kukafka's Edgar Award-winning novel deliberately withholds the killer's voice, redirecting the true-crime genre's usual fascination with the perpetrator toward the women whose lives intersected with his.

Published in 2022, Notes on an Execution won the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Kukafka has described wanting to write a serial killer novel that resisted the genre's usual fascination with the killer's interior life, focusing instead on the women around him.

Discussion questions

The novel structures itself around a man's execution but refuses to give him first-person narration — we see him only through others. How does Kukafka use this structural choice — and what is she saying about whose perspective true crime narratives usually centre?
Each of the women connected to the killer — his mother, his sister-in-law, the detective — has her own full story, not reducible to her relationship with him. How does Kukafka develop these as complete lives rather than supporting characters in his story?
The novel moves backward and forward in time, building toward the execution from multiple angles. How does this temporal structure create suspense or meaning differently than a linear approach would?
True crime as a genre has been criticised for centring perpetrators and treating victims as props. How does Notes on an Execution respond to this critique — does it succeed in redirecting attention?
Notes on an Execution won the Edgar Award. What does it do that earns recognition within crime fiction while explicitly critiquing some of the genre's conventions?