Let me just start with I loved this book. Although, I knew I would. Tami Hoag has been my favourite mystery/thriller author for as long as I can remember. I know when I pick up one of her books I won’t be able put it down until I’m I finished. She has mastered the art of suspense, always leaving me reading from the edge of my seat. Her attention to detail paints me the most vivid worlds and immerses me right in the middle. I love her richly developed characters who find a way either into my heart or scare me to death.
Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska have always held a special place in my heart. This book brings me back to Minneapolis with them to solve another heinous crime/catch another serial killer. It also brings up a lot of real life issues that hit close to the heart such as bullying, dysfunctional families and a single mother struggling for balance between a career she loves and spending time with her boys.
Here’s the synopsis from the back cover:
“Kovac had seen more dead bodies than he could count: Men, women, children; victims of shootings, stabbings, strangulations, beatings; fresh corpses and bodies that had been left for days in the trunks of cars in the dead of summer. But he had never seen anything quite like this . . . “
On a frigid New Year’s Eve in Minneapolis a young woman’s brutalized body falls from the trunk of a car into the path of oncoming traffic. Questions as to whether she was alive or dead when she hit the icy pavement result in her macabre nickname, Zombie Doe. Unidentified and unidentifiable, she is the ninth nameless female victim of the year, and homicide detectives Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska are charged with the task of not only finding out who Zombie Doe is, but who in her life hated her enough to destroy her. Was it personal, or could it just have been a crime of opportunity? Their greatest fear is that not only is she their ninth Jane Doe of the year, but that she may be the ninth victim of a vicious transient serial killer they have come to call Doc Holiday.
Crisscrossing America’s heartland, Doc Holiday chooses his victims at random, snatching them in one city and leaving them in another, always on a holiday. If Zombie Doe is one of his, he has brought his gruesome game to a new and more terrifying level. But as Kovac and Liska begin to uncover the truth, they will find that the monsters in their ninth girl’s life may have lived closer to home. And even as another young woman disappears, they have to ask the question: which is the greater evil–the devil you know or the devil you don’t?
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes a thrilling suspense ride type of read. Although it is book #4 and I do recommend reading them all because they are so good, you don’t have to have read the other books to follow along. It definitely stands on its own merits.
