Rated 4 of 5 stars
Omer builds a storyline full of angst with a solid female protagonist and mind-bending double-layered serial killer story. Here’s the Goodreads synopsis:
Three Chicago women have been found strangled, embalmed, and posed as if still alive. Doubting the findings of the local PD’s profiler, The FBI calls on forensic psychologist Zoe Bentley to investigate.
Zoe quickly gets off on the wrong foot with her new partner, Special Agent Tatum Gray. Zoe’s a hunter, intense and focused; Tatum’s a smug maverick with little respect for the rules. Together, they must descend into a serial killer’s psyche and untangle his twisted fantasies, or more women will die. But when the contents of three inconspicuous envelopes reveal a chilling connection to gruesome murders from Zoe’s childhood, suddenly the hunter becomes the hunted.
My Review:
Zoe Bentley is not your typical profiler. She’s had her own run-ins with a serial killer and a unique way of working through the relationship aspect in a purely professorial way. She takes out the emotion of relationships and looks at how people will logically react which makes her very good at what she does. As she works a case of a serial killer that are strangling, posing women…she finds unique similarities that chill her from a past experience. She has to work through, with her new partner Tatum, how she’s going to balance her personal feelings and professional ones in regards to the case.
I loved going on the journey with Tatum and Zoe as they are always just a step behind the killer and closing in. The serial killer is interesting as well and you wonder for most of the book why they kill the way they do. When you find out…it’s gross and shocking. I loved that so many things are revealed towards the end and you’re left with a twist that ensures that Zoe Bentley’s story is not ending here. There will be more to discover.
The writing is simple to read and fly through easily. I enjoyed listening on audiobook and the pace and inflection of the narrator was perfect to portray Zoe as a laid back, pragmatic, hard-to-crack professional while balancing the portrayal of Tatum as a caring yet observant individual with high emotional intelligence. I loved that Zoe is not always right and Tatum showed honor and integrity even when also making bad decisions. The writer definitely provided layers to their personalities. I am hoping to learn more about Tatum in coming novels as I think he’s a viable sidekick. I’m grateful for the lack of insta-love between the main characters but I feel something brewing there. That definitely keeps me going in the hopes that something develops over time much like a real relationship. All in all, I enjoyed the story and look forward to reading the next book in the series. Highly recommended for those that enjoy police procedural serial killer investigations.
Raging Book Reviews Highly Recommended
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