The Butcher Game

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.

The Butcher Game follows The Butcher and the Wren, the first installment in the Dr. Wren Muller series in which the details of Wren and Jeremy’s past are revealed. In flashbacks, we learn that Jeremy attended medical school under the alias “Cal” and befriended Wren, then known as Emily. Emily was a diligent and motivated medical student, and she was kind to Cal. She trusted him, which made it possible for Jeremy to kidnap Emily and imprison her in the swamp near his house, along with other people he had kidnapped to hunt for sport. Emily escaped and later changed her name to Wren to symbolize her resilience and survival.

Because Wren escaped him, Jeremy became deeply obsessed with his failure to murder her. His fixation culminates in him stalking her and attempting to play a twisted game of cat and mouse with his new murders, which makes up the present-day plot of The Butcher and the Wren. Wren almost catches Jeremy, with help from Detective Leroux and the New Orleans Police Department, but he slips away. His escape haunts Wren, directly influencing her character arc in The Butcher Game.