Starred review from December 11, 2017
Inspired by the Ted Bundy case, Edgar-winner Gardiner’s excellent sequel to 2017’s Unsub finds newly minted FBI agent Caitlin Hendrix still feeling her way on the FBI’s elite Behavioral Analysis Unit and working on a long-distance relationship. Her skills as a profiler are soon put to the test by another unsub—unknown subject. Women, who appear to have nothing in common, are disappearing on Saturday nights near Austin, Tex. Two of the victims were found dead in a wooded area, both surrounded by Polaroid photos that show other dead women dressed in white negligees. Caitlin and the other team members deduce they’re looking for a confident perp who can charm his victims into coming with him. Caitlin’s intelligent perceptions lead her to a killer whose arrogance may be his undoing. Gardiner expertly integrates the FBI science of profiling with a suspenseful plot and believable characters. It’s no wonder a TV drama based on this series is in the works at CBS. Agent: Shane Salerno, Story Factory.
December 15, 2017
Having survived her high-profile debut (Unsub, 2017), FBI profiler Caitlin Hendrix gets a new quarry: the Saturday Night Killer, who whisks Gideon County, Texas, women away from venues everybody thought were safe and then gruesomely dispatches them.The first victim was abducted from the Red Dog Cafe, the second from the Gideon Western College campus, the third from the Gideon Western Gateway 16 Cinema, the fourth from Solace's Main Street, the fifth from her own home. Two of them were found raped, murdered, and ceremoniously clad in white nightgowns and laid out; the others remain missing, presumed dead. When Texas lawmen ask the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit for help, Caitlin Hendrix flies from Washington to Austin. An overwrought phone call from secretary Lia Fox identifies her ex-lover Aaron Gage as the killer, and he does seem to fit the profile to a T. But there's a compelling and obvious reason he can't be the perp every law enforcement officer in the Lone Star State is looking for, and Caitlin has to dig up another candidate. In a surprisingly short time, she comes up with a new suspect, questions him, stakes him out, arrests him, interrogates him, and gets him indicted. His only reactions are taunting and defiance, and once he escapes from custody in a memorably unlikely sequence, you can see why. Now the stakes are raised even further. Caitlin knows who she's looking for, and she even knows who his likely targets are: anyone who helped play a role in identifying and bringing him in. Fast as her team is, the suspect is even faster, and he seems to have sprouted an equally murderous accomplice. How many more will die before Caitlin finally closes the case for good?Though this sequel doesn't reach the melodramatic heights or depths of Unsub, Gardiner once again does serial killing to a turn.
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Starred review from April 23, 2018
This unnerving second installment to Gardiner’s Unsub series, read with steely determination by Huber, focuses on Caitlin Hendrix, a fledgling agent assigned to the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit hunting for a predator who has been killing young women in Texas. The person who fits her profile, Kyle Detrick, is charming and cunning, but when Caitlin attempts to get inside his head, he gets into hers. As the suspenseful plot proceeds from corpse to corpse and from Solace, Tex., to Portland, Ore., Huber delivers the third-person omniscient narrative with an increasingly hard-edged intensity, heightening the novel’s already considerable tension. Caitlin sounds young, impatient, and, at times, uncertain. Among her new associates, Special Agent in Charge C.J. Emmerich speaks with an air of crisp professionalism. Agent Brianne Rainey is, as the author describes, “chill,” with a pleasantly nonchalant style of speech. As for the honey-voiced, Ted Bundy–like serial killer, he maintains his confident, insinuating and intimidating attitude to nearly the end. Gardiner’s lean prose and Huber’s unsettling narration make this a worthy thrill ride. A Dutton hardcover.
December 15, 2017
Edgar-winner Gardiner (Unsub, 2017) returns with a second Caitlin Hendrix thriller guaranteed to keep readers up all night. Now working in the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, Hendrix is sent to Texas to investigate the disappearance of several women who seem to have vanished into thin air. The abductions are increasing in frequency, and Hendrix and her team must profile and locate the offender, a task made more urgent when one of the missing women's bodies is found. The team's analysis reveals the killer to be bold, cocksure, arrogant, and determined not to be caught. Hendrix, not just a little badass herself, will have to get into the mind of this criminal reminiscent of Ted Bundy to have any chance of beating him at his own game. With a plot that moves at a breathless pace and a heroine with a history of her own issues, Gardiner's gripping nail-biter will please fans of Alex Kava, Tami Hoag and even Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter novels. Be ready for requests. Television rights have been sold to CBS.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)
September 1, 2017
After series starter UNSUB, rookie FBI agent Caitlin Hendrix goes up against a murderous "unknown subject" with all the charm of Ted Bundy. Somewhere in southern Texas, women keep disappearing on Saturday nights and are later found, surrounded by Polaroids pressed into the earth like tombstones.
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