Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Julie's Review: Into the Black Nowhere


Author: Meg Gardiner
Series: UnSub #2
Publication Date: January 30, 2018
Publisher: Random House
Pages: 368
Obtained: publisher via NetGalley
Genre:  Psychological Thriller
Rating: 5/5
Bottom Line: I love Meg Gardiner and you should too
Grab, Just get it at the library, or Remove from your TBR list? Grab

Summary: In southern Texas, on Saturday nights, women are disappearing. One vanishes from a movie theater. Another, from her car at a stoplight. A mother is ripped from her home while checking on her baby. Rookie FBI agent Caitlin Hendrix, newly assigned to the FBI's elite Behavioral Analysis Unit, fears that a serial killer is roaming the dark roads outside Austin. Caitlin's unit discovers the first victim's body in the woods, laid out in a bloodstained white baby-doll nightgown. A second victim in a white nightie lies deeper in the forest's darkness. Around the bodies, Polaroid photos are stuck in the earth like headstones, picturing other women with their wrists slashed. The women in the woods are not the killer's first victims, nor are they likely to be his last. To track the UNSUB, Caitlin must get inside his mind; he is a confident, meticulous killer, capable of charming his victims until their guard is down, snatching them in plain sight. He then plays out a twisted fantasy—turning them into dolls for him to possess, control, and ultimately destroy. Caitlin's profile leads the FBI to focus on one man: a charismatic, successful professional who easily gains people's trust. But can they apprehend him before it's too late? As Saturday night approaches, Caitlin and the FBI enter a desperate game of cat and mouse, racing to capture the cunning predator before he claims his next victim. ~amazon.com

Review: I'm going to be honest and if you go back and search the blog you will find out that we are HUGE, I mean, HUGE fans of Meg Gardiner. Whether it's her Jo Beckett, Evan Delaney or now Caitlin Hendrix series' we can't get enough. Plus then there are her standalone novels that are fantastic as well. So if I gush about her latest, Into the Black Nowhere, it's because I know I won't be disappointed.

This is the 2nd book in her UnSub series and we rejoin Caitlin as she's about to go out on her first case with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU). She's the newbie on the team but while she's confident in her abilities there are times when she feels like a fish out of water. She wants to gain the trust of her colleagues but needs to give herself time to prove her skills.

As she develops the profile for the Unsub she starts to have some flashbacks to her own issues in her teens that came to the surface with her last case. Will these issues help her or hold her back in catching her killer? Will she let him get the best of her or will she rise up and catch him?

For me these books invade my mind so much so that I have dreams/nightmares about them but I always say that it's just the definition of a fantastic novel if that happens. I also love how Caitlin is a hellava strong women but she also has her vulnerabilities. Can she compartmentalize enough to be successful?  The romance of the novels is always with a partner who is complementary to her female heroines. They never detract, they always have yin/yang. That doesn't say that they aren't without their own issues. For Caitlin it's the fact that she's on one coast and Sean is on the other but they'll figure it out.

This one is left with quite the cliffhanger, so the quicker that Unsub #3 can be published, the better.

Now if you've never read Ms. Gardiner , what the heck are you waiting for? Any where is a good place to start!

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