"Kovac and Liska take on multiple twisted cases as #1 New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag explores a murder from the past, a murder from the present, and a life that was never meant to be.

As the dreary, bitter weather of late fall descends on Minneapolis, Detective Nikki Liska is restless, already bored with her new assignment to the cold case squad. She misses the rush of pulling an all-nighter and the sense of urgency of hunting a desperate killer on the loose. Most of all she misses her old partner, Sam Kovac.

Kovac is having an even harder time adjusting to Liska’s absence, saddled with a green new partner younger than most of Sam's wardrobe. But Kovac is distracted from his troubles by an especially brutal double homicide: a prominent university professor and his wife, bludgeoned and hacked to death in their home with a ceremonial Japanese samurai sword. Liska’s case-the unsolved murder of a decorated sex crimes detective-is less of a distraction: Twenty five years later, there is little hope for finding the killer who got away.

Meanwhile, Minneapolis resident Evi Burke has a life she only dreamed of as a kid in and out of foster homes: a beautiful home, a family, people who love her, a fulfilling job. But a danger from her past is stalking her idyllic present. A danger bent on destroying the perfect life she was never meant to have.

As the trails of two crimes a quarter of century apart twist and cross, Kovac and Liska race to find answers before a killer strikes again."

Mystery time for my mom!

In the heat of passion or rage, there was no forethought. It was an act triggered from a part of the brain where emotion and instinct lived. In other cases, the motivation for murder was built one step, on transgression, one insult at a time, layer by layer, until the mind could make an argument for a violent solution to an untenable situation.

A gripping connect the dots thriller. Not just a few dots but many which even made it more tantalizing. Kovac & Liska have split up-not in a bad way but in different departments. Liska is now working cold cases and Kovac is still doing homicide with a new side kick, the cool hand Luke type.

Since there are to many books on my to read shelf, the beginning of a book determines if I will stay with it, and the beginning was actually 25 years past, a murder of one of their own, Duffy an investigator for sexual crimes was gunned down in front of his house. Liska has been assigned the case. She is a dog with a bone, she does not give up and does not take no for an answer. I love her true grit way of getting answers. She is a single mom working the cold case in order to have more time for her boys. She is very meticulous with getting her questions answered. It always comes down to asking the right questions. Duffy married, with a nine year old daughter and two foster high school daughters in their care. What happened to this family and what is their background? These questions give heart to a terrible tragedy.

Kovac and his new partner have been called to investigate a gruesome murder of a husband and wife in their home. They too discover a family that is extremely dysfunctional as they connect the dots of family torn. The family have adopted two children that now are adults with serious problems and completely different from each other. Charlie who tries to keep the peace with an overbearing father that belittles everyone and a mother that drinks herself to oblivion. Diana that uses sex as a weapon to put it mildly that is bio polar to boot. You never know what you will get with this character.


Evi Burke has a new life. A husband that adores her and a baby girl that is the apple of their eye. Evi works with women who are escaping from the sex traffic trade and when she receives a note with the words I know who you are and I know where you live, she believes it to be related to one of her clients but only to find out that it may be more sinister.

Loved how this all played together and the building of the characters! It kept up last night to finish! Loved it.

A Special Thank You to Penguin Group and Netgalley for the ARC and the opportunity to post an honest review

Detective Nikki Liska and Sam Kovac had been partners in the homicide squad of Minneapolis for years but Nikki has left to join the cold case unit so that she can spend more time with her teenage sons. Her first cold case is the 25-year-old murder of detective Duffy and it is not an easy job when both Duffy's former partner and his family try to block her. In the meantime, Kovac is still trying to get used to his new young partner as they try to solve the gruesome homicide of an university professor and his wife, killed by a Japanese samurai sword. As Liska and Kovac interview witnesses and follow clues, their cases intertwine.
I liked to explore Liska and Kovac's relationship. Even though they are no longer partners, their friendship is still strong. I especially admired the character of Liska, a strong woman surrounded mostly by men who isn't scared to stand up to old misogynists who don't think she can do the job. As the narration alternates between her case and Kovac's case, I thought I knew what direction the novel was taking, but there are so many twists and turns, that the ending caught me completely by surprise. Well-written and suspenseful, this novel is the fifth book in a series (but it can be read as a standalone) and my first novel by Tami Hoag. Although I found some of the violence a bit too graphic for my taste, I was taken by this sinister and chilling thriller and look forward to reading more books by this author.