The 18th book in the Women's Murder Club mystery series. This is a good one!
STORY SUMMARY
The story opens in the present and then after a short chapter, it goes back to 5 years previously.
Three teachers, all single and in their late twenties/early thirties, go out for dinner and drinks one evening after teaching all day in the private prep school where they work in San Francisco.
They disappear without a trace....and two days later, one of them, Carly Myers, is found hanging from a shower head in a sleazy motel. It looks to be suicide. Until further inspection.....it's a homicide! She has been murdered and now the police are really digging in to find the other two teachers.
The press and the chief of police (Jacobi) are demanding an arrest in the "school night" case as the disappearances have been named.
Lindsay, the lead homicide detective, turns to one of her best friends, Cindy Thomas, a journalist. They take a new approach to the case and upon learning of some new information about the victims......they are stunned!
Meanwhile, Lyndsay's husband Joe Molinari who is with the FBI, meets an Eastern European young woman with a badly scarred cheek on one side of her face. She claims she has seen a former war criminal.....someone who is notorious with the ICC and Eastern Europe...and also someone who is supposedly dead! She says he is Slobodin Petrovic although over here in the USA he is known as Tony Branko. He and the other Serbian soldiers, tortured, raped and killed most of her village. He shot her husband and sliced her infant son's throat. And now she sees him walking the streets of San Francisco not too far from where she lives.
Before Lyndsay can help solve the case of the missing teachers, Anna, the Eastern European woman, also disappears! The entire department, FBI and the members of the Murder Women's Club, are on the hunt...not for a ghost but for a real monster.
Will they find the women in time?
MY THOUGHTS
This is a very fast-paced novel. It's a good mystery with some underlying horrors of the Serbian and Bosnian issue.
The characters in the book who are not part of the Murder Women's Club, are all well-developed. You will weep with Anna and her story. She is a true survivor.
Some of it, of course, is so fictionalized. It IS fiction....and you know that the FBI or San Francisco police wouldn't solve this type of crime so quickly. But these books are always great and I love any little twists the author tosses into the plot.
This book deals with kidnapping, sex slavery, war criminals/war crimes, abuse, torture, rape, imprisonment, drug use.
It also deals with the strength we have as humans to get through trauma and major ordeals.
In my opinion, this book is appropriate for ages 17 and older (due to mature content/subject matter).
On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest, I rate this a 9.
2 comments:
I've never heard of this series. Will have to check it out at the library.
Looks good but the 18th in the series?? I'm ok with 5 or 6 but 18 is pushing it for me because then I feel like I have to keep up with it UGH. But it does sound good so I'll put it on my TBR list.
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