Killer by Olivia Howe

A genuinely engaging read, it had everything going on and more and it was one that I just couldn’t take my eyes off for a single second.

Catching a serial killer is a task that nobody wants to have to take on but that is what is facing Gwen Anderson because as a homicide detective, she is facing the daunting truth that her partner and her and being led a merry chase by a deviant who has eluded them for far too long. Frustrated by the lack of progress, Gwen isn’t above taking chances and either bending or breaking the rules to get a foot on the ladder to getting this guy behind bars, Too many people are living in fear, he has to be stopped at all cost and as far as Gwen is concerned she will stop at nothing to make that happen.

I liked her determination but at times I found her a little hard, I got that her situation was far from rosy but she gave very little away, although I was screaming t her like a loon when she bedded a one-night stand, really woman are you not trying to catch a man that is killing and mutilating women and yet you swan off home with a guy you have just met!! I was incredulous.

The killer has been tagged with the moniker Doc, and I thought the author did a superb job of getting across the deviancy of his situation, he was a master manipulator who took his time to select and study his victims, before brutalising them in a way that was close to barbaric! His signature mark of a smiley face drawn in their own blood was macabre.

I think as the story took hold, it was obvious that his obsession was heading Gwen’s way and when he watches for her to arrive at the scene of his latest handy work, I was sure that it will be only a matter of time before they will meet in all too different circumstances. I have my fingers crossed for Gwen with that one.

As the first book in a novella series, they don’t come much better!!