Amazon  / B&N /  BB

 

Publisher: Amazon Crossing (June 1, 2021)

Amaia Salazar, a young detective from the north of Spain, has joined a group of trainees at the FBI Academy in Virginia. Haunted by her past and having already tracked down a predator on her own, Amaia is no typical rookie. And this is no ordinary student lecture at Quantico. FBI agent Aloisius Dupree is already well acquainted with Amaia’s skills, her intuition, and her ability to understand evil. He now needs her help in hunting an elusive serial killer dubbed “the Composer,” and in solving another case that’s been following him his whole life.

From New Jersey to Oklahoma to Texas, the Composer’s victims are entire families annihilated in the chaos of natural disasters, their bodies posed with chilling purpose amid the ruins. Dupree and Amaia follow his trail to New Orleans. The clock is ticking. It’s the eve of the worst hurricane in the city’s history. But a troubling call from Amaia’s aunt back home awakens in Amaia the ghosts from her childhood and sends her down a path as dark as that of the coming storm.

 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

Bill and Bull. They’re with the Violent Crimes Unit. These fellas have arrested more criminals than all the rest of my officers combined. They know these streets better than anyone… If I had a son, I’d trust them with his life; if I had a daughter, I’d keep her out of their reach.

 

Juan had difficulty with words… he was overwhelmed by the very fact that every object had its own unique name. He was one of those who thought things existed only when they were spoken of, so he could exclude horrors from his life and home by refusing to put them into words.

 

Her first thought was to go to the nearest toilet. She didn’t care if it was filthy. She needed her privacy, even if she had to pee on the floor. This is teaching me a lesson, she thought. Comes a time, from one day to the next, when we find ourselves ready to accept things we swore we’d never put up with.

 

… it was far better to be nice to someone like her than to get on her bad side. As his late grandmother used to say— and she knew a lot about it— you don’t have to believe they exist, but don’t you dare go around claiming they don’t.

  

My Review:

 

This is a brilliant piece of writing and of superb quality. I was late getting to this one and thought I would give it a quick start before beginning my scheduled tasks but soon changed all my plans as I was bewitched and couldn’t put it down. Ms. Redondo sucked me into a baffling, disconcerting, complex, prickly, and distressingly compelling vortex that tossed me in several different directions without a playbook of the plethora of uncomfortably intriguing storylines that eventually connected and entwined.

It was heart-squeezing, ghastly, inconceivable, curiously addictive, gritty, twisted, riveting, and ingeniously paced and executed.   I’ll be processing and savoring this one for quite some time as the little pea in my brain is still unpacking and connecting all the dots. I consumed this book as quickly as my tired optical orbs and feverish brain could take in 500 action-packed pages, and oddly enough, I would have been thrilled with 500 more of the same.