The bloody murder of her mother when she was a teenager made Lydia Strong into a woman obsessed with bringing brutal killers to justice. Now thirty years old, she is a reclusive bestselling true crime writer and investigative consultant whose intuitions never lie.

The latest case to capture her attention is the disappearance of three adults, each the kind of loner whose sudden absence isn’t missed-they have no family, few friends. The Santa Fe Police don’t see a pattern, just three people who left their empty lives behind. But when another woman turns up missing, her apartment streaked with blood, even the police have to admit that something is wrong in their usually quiet town.

Lydia and P.I. Jeffrey Mark, the ex-FBI agent who solved her mother’s murder, begin a relentless investigation. But it is only when the killer ups the ante and goes after Lydia herself that, just like fifteen years ago when she put the FBI on the trail of her mother’s killer, the real hunt begins…

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I’m not sure why I didn’t particularly like this book but it felt like such a chore reading it. Lisa Unger – Beautiful Lies was better. This was was dredge.

The heroine Lydia is someone for whom the reader should be able to root, however I found her to be one of the most annoying main characters I’ve read recently. She’s a writer of true crime books and a private investigator who, when she was a teenager, discovered her mother’s bound and mutilated body. She is generally horrible to everyone who has the misfortune to encounter her.

Her love interest Jeffrey is also a private investigator. He happens to be the FBI investigator who was assigned to her mother’s case and has looked out for her all these years. I love a good May-December romance (in fairness this is more May-September) but this pairing was squicky. Jeffrey is actually quite nice, but so enamored by her that he allows her to lead him around by the nose. She even makes the observation at one point, something to the effect of, “he would always come when she called.”

My primary issue with the story though is that everyone, including the Chief of Police, allows Lydia to run the investigation.

The police arrived and Lydia’s fears were confirmed. The woman had been shot in the head, had been lying dead on her floor, her hungry cat gnawing on her fingers. Rather than being terrified and upset, as Jeffrey had expected, Lydia began asking questions of the police. Were there signs of forced entry or a struggle? How long did they think she had been dead? She intended to cover the story for the Georgetown University newspaper. Jeffrey was more worried about her lack of emotional response than he would have been if she had had a breakdown. That, at least, would have been more normal.

She’s a writer, yet she directs even the seasoned investigators through the missing persons and murder investigations. She barks orders at the uniforms regarding the processing of evidence, rakes the Chief over the coals regularly, and tells Jeffrey when to jump and how high. They all let her do so, bowing to her “expertise.” It made zero sense.

Eh, I’m happy she improved from this book onto the next. 1/5