Series: Detective Josie Quinn #14
Published by Bookouture on April 12 2022
Format: eARC
Source: Net Galley
Pages: 242
Amazon UK
Goodreads
Also by this author: Her Mother's Grave, Her Final Confession, The Bones She Buried , Her Silent Cry, Cold Heart Creek, Find Her Alive, Save Her Soul, Breathe Your Last, Hush Little Girl, Her Deadly Touch, The Drowning Girls, Local Girl Missing , The Innocent Wife, Close Her Eyes, My Child is Missing
Lying on the ground, the girl’s prom dress, the colour of champagne, shimmers in the dying light. A corsage of wilting pink sweetheart roses decorates her wrist. She is perfectly still, like a delicate china doll, trapped forever in a sleep from which she will never wake…
When a call comes in about a young girl found dead at a high school prom—her life drained away from a fatal stab wound—Detective Josie Quinn drops everything to attend the scene. Taking in the girl’s neatly braided hair, Josie feels a flicker of recognition. But no one comes forward to identify this innocent child, murdered on what should have been the happiest night of her life.
Trawling missing persons files, Josie realizes where she has seen the girl before. Gemma Farmer disappeared a few months ago, shattering her family. But why would her body appear now, on her sixteenth birthday? Josie’s only clue is the five neat little cuts on Gemma’s pale arm. Days later, another missing girl shows up, tucked neatly into her bed on the morning of her birthday, her favourite teddy beside her, her skin as cold as ice—and the autopsy reveals scars on her arm matching Gemma’s.
Her head spinning, Josie’s fears the marks are a serial killer’s twisted way of counting his victims. How many other innocent lives have already been lost, and how many more could follow? The case takes a terrifying turn when a local girl goes missing just days before she turns sixteen.
Clock ticking, Josie turns the town upside down in search of answers. But when her own chief comes forward with the missing piece of a devastating puzzle spanning decades, will it be enough to get inside the mind of the most unexpected and elusive killer she has ever encountered, or will another precious life be taken?
I think this is by far my favourite book in the series. Ok. I still haven’t read book 1 or 2 yet and I have loved all the others but this one just blows them out the park.
This book even had a different feel to it. A different focal point. Generally, in a Josie Quinn book, we have the case and then alongside it, the personal life of Josie. This time, none of that. We had the case and only the case. I had to keep reading! It was a book that had me on tenterhooks. God it was intense and harrowing and heart breaking and a few jaw dropping moments. I am already dying to get my hands on the next one!
I loved that the focal point was more on the Chief and his personal life. To an extent, because as I say the case takes front and centre but the Chief investigating it with Josie was a sight. Watching past and present collide in ways you don’t see coming.
As I say this book had a different feel to it, and I loved it. Don’t get me wrong I love the personal moments splattered throughout a book. But this one doesn’t have it and I think with the tale we are being told, it worked best that we didn’t. Because nothing should distract from the sad tale un-weaving in front of us.
Everything, when it unravels, does so at such a rapid rate. You have to keep up or your head will spin, especially in the last 15% it was madness. I did find a few times that I was shouting at the team because they weren’t looking at the obvious and I was getting frustrated that it took them a couple of chapters for them to catch up. But I get that is how police work is done, and sometimes being so close to a case they don’t always see it.
I really did love this book! It was frighteningly crazy and terrifying. Trying to work out how the murders are linked and why someone would do something so horrifying. The answer is no better!
It is a belter of a book and I am chomping at the bit for book 15!!!!
Until next time xxx
My thanks to Noelle at Bookouture for the tour invite and to the author for a copy of her book in return for my honest and unbiased review
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