Glimpse, The Angel Shot

Amazing story. Well developed characters that are in a twisted engrossing thriller. Highly recommended. Super suspense that comes to a satisfying end! Highly recommended . A true roller coaster thrill ride

When I started this book I wasn't aware that it's part of the series. There are a lot of hints to the past and I think it would have been better to start at the beginning. Nevertheless it's still understandable as a stand-alone novel.
The fact that it's an old case has a logical effect on the suspense level: it's neither very suspenseful nor gory. King wants to show us how serial killers tick. His emphasis is on psychology, but I doubt any profiler would have guessed what Pat guesses nearly from the start.
Guessing who did it was a bit too easy though. I like surprises and unexpected twist.

Criminal Psychologist Patricia Holmes and Detective Rick McCoy are once again working to catch a serial killer. Seven women have disappeared from local bars only to be abducted, assaulted, and murdered after asking for a specific drink ... an Angel Shot. The women were all single and alone at the bar.

What do these women have in common?

It's an intricate plot with varied suspects rippling through the non-stop action that starts on the very first page. The characters are solidly drawn as they glimpse into the mind of a killer. Although 4th in the series, it is easily read as a stand alone, but I highly recommend starting at the beginning to grab all those little nuggets that make this an exceptional series.

Many thanks to the author / The Wild Rose Press, Inc / Netgalley for the digital copy of this Crime Fiction. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

Glimpse, The Angel Shot is a book in the Deadly Glimpses series by Stephen B. King. Released in this edition 11th Nov 2020, it's 374 pages and available in paperback and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats.

This is a difficult to classify hybrid of psychological thriller, police procedural, with a touch of psychological magical realism(?). It's not so much a "whodunnit", since that's heavily foreshadowed throughout as a study in psychosis and the mind of a murderer.

Although it's the fourth book in the series, it works well enough as a standalone. The writing was highly uneven to me. I found myself being yanked out of my suspension of disbelief at several points by oddly clunky oversimplified dialogue or strangely overwrought prose. The plotting was also uneven and raced in some places skipping over implied scenes whilst dragging in between. Overall, though, it's a readable and fairly engaging psychological thriller with well rendered characters and a well-thought out plot. I found several of the characters personally repellent and I was annoyed at their intermittent unprofessional and immature conduct throughout much of the read. I did appreciate that the author manages to instill a sense of menace and psychological stress into the scenes without resorting to graphic gore and violence. The themes of abduction, rape, victim drugging (rohypnol), and murder might be triggering for some readers.

Three and a half stars. I would recommend it for fans of psychological thrillers, murder procedurals, and the like.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.