Alafair Burke’s new series heroine, NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher, has really come alive for me over the course of two books. Ellie is young and charmingly unjaded about her job and the things she sees. She was first introduced in Dead Connection and I enjoyed Burke’s fast-paced narrative.
One of the things that I like most about Ellie is her innocence about life. Sure, she’s great at catching killers and breaking down witnesses, and even at thinking outside the box. But when it comes to personal relationships and how to manage them, Ellie struggles and gets blindsided by events and people she trusts but shouldn’t.
She’s also an organic character. Things in her world change, and she changes with them. The partner she had in the first book (and I’d really recommend reading these books in order rather than jumping in with this one) is gone. Her acceptance into the world of the homicide detectives hasn’t been easy because of the way she got into her present position and who her past partner was.
Despite her charm, Ellie also comes with a lot of baggage. Her father was a cop, and there’s a lot of mystery concerning his death. At least, to Ellie there is. That early, unresolved loss has left her with a lot of questions and a history of being in the news trying to trigger a new investigation into her father’s passing. I believe Burke will eventually deal with that issue, but I’m patiently waiting. Both novels have been stamina reads, putting me in the chair and reading into the wee hours of the night.
You just can’t put this book down. From the opening passages of young Chelsea Hart’s murder, to Ellie’s discovery of the body while on her morning run with her brother, Burke dragged me relentlessly through the twists and turns of her plot. I dogged Ellie’s heels, in constant competition with her to ferret out the clues and the trail that would lead me to the serial killer’s identity.
This first gruesome murder eventually leads Ellie back into her ex-partner’s investigations. It doesn’t take her long to realize that he’d been onto the serial killer years ago, and that only the serial killer’s mysterious sabbatical from murdering young women probably kept those cases from being solved.
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