This is one of those books that leaves me conflicted when it is over. Let me state upfront that Victims2 is not a romance novel it is strictly a whodunit, thriller. For me, that isn’t a negative because I love a good murder mystery. There are a lot of positives with only a few negatives in my opinion. The story compares favorably to a good Criminal Minds episode. There is a sick serial murderer. We get in his mind, not from the behavioral profile team but from the murder’s thoughts and revelations.
The book is well written. Muriel Garcia does an excellent job of peeling off the many layers of sickness in the mind of “The Helltown Reaper” as the news dubs him. For most of the book, my stomach rolls, and my heart beat faster, in anticipation of what happens next.
The new partners of Detective Barnes, the senior member of the team, and Detective McKenzie the junior member are figuring out how to work together. There are issues they need to resolve from the beginning because Detective Barnes is paired with McKenzie after his longtime partner is killed in the line of duty. He is grieving. Also, McKenzie is a female and the long hours together, searching for a serial killer is hard enough on a relationship but throw in a female partner sharing those hours has the potential for the green monster to appear.
Some very fascinating twists make me shudder. This is a dark, gritty, criminal and his actions are sick. He believes he is making his victims pay for wrongs that they escaped punishment in the past. The author does a good job convincing me the procedures that the detectives, lab techs, ME, etc. follow are believable and necessary to catch the sicko. Now we get to the point where I’m conflicted. There are several places that I had to do the hand wave because the situation is a little far-fetched, but it isn’t enough of a leap to take away for the story.
I went into this story realizing it is a series. I didn’t understand, in this series, the culprit doesn’t get caught. I’m not a cliffhanger fan, as most know. I get that many of my favorite TV shows have serial murderers that take a season or more to wrap-up. I don’t have a problem with that because I know from the start that I can DVR those shows and watch them consecutively, or more often, I know it is only a week, or three months until my next fix. Getting to the end of this book made me angry. I have never read a procedural that left me hanging. For this reason, and this reason alone I deducted a star immediately.
In the end, I can say that Muriel Garcia has an interesting mind. She weaves a gripping story with Victims2 that holds the reader’s attention from the beginning to end. I look forward to reading more from her, and I will be aware that she doesn’t have a problem leaving the reader hanging. Good job!
ARC received for an honest review