Dead Don't Lie by L.R. Nicolello Published by Harlequin E-HQN on August 1st 2014
Pages: 384
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
You can run from the past…but you can never truly hide…
Detective Evelyn Davis delves deep into the minds of monsters for a living. She's the best psychological profiler in the Seattle P.D., with a talent that comes from heartbreaking experience. When Evelyn was just eighteen, she received word of her family's murder in the form of a horrifying video. Fifteen years later, tracking down other psychopaths is the only thing that brings her some peace.
But now two local families have been wiped out. Though the chilling crime scenes suggest murder-suicides, Evelyn believes a serial killer is at work. So does Special Agent Marcus Moretti, whose easy charm and fiercely protective instincts are breaking down all her defenses. Evelyn needs to put aside her emotional attachment to find the madman stalking her city—but with each discovery, this case becomes more personal. She's starting to suspect the killer wants her—and he is edging closer with every step, ready to make Evelyn pay a devastating price….
A pretty good read and a surprisingly engaging one from L.R. Nicolello about a model-turned-detective when her dream on the catwalks of Milan falls apart 15 years ago. With her family murdered, all Evelyn has in her life is her partner and her partner’s family to lean on, and her cases to work for as she fights for justice and closure for them. The strange family-slayings however, soon start again and she has every reason to believe, along with FBI Special Agent Marcus Moretti, that this time, she’s in the killer’s crosshairs.
The suspense and the unusual nature of the crimes certainly drew me in and accounted for a very sleepless night (not from nightmares but because I wanted to get through the books) and I definitely liked how Evelyn coped (or at least tried) with the hellish time in between the family slayings. She’s strong, likeable and yet vulnerable, although her catwalk past seems to conveniently give her a beauty that seems out of place in the gritty world of law enforcement; in fact, I immediately thought of Castle’s Kate Beckett the further in I got into the book. Her growing relationship with Marcus Moretti thankfully lacked juvenile exploits and the maturity of writing lent them both credibility and believability. The only issue I had was the motive for murder, that seemed rather far-fetched after all the buildup, but it was enough to keep me reading until the last page.
