Ashes to Ashes
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4.2 • 33 Ratings
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
The first book in the Kovac and Liska series, one of the most engaging detective duos in crime thrillers. In ASHES TO ASHES they join FBI agent Kate Conlan as she tracks a serial killer known as The Cremator.
A killer performs a bizarre ceremony in a wooded Minneapolis park, setting the bodies ablaze. He has already claimed three lives, and he won't stop there. Only this time there is a witness. But she isn't talking.
Kate Conlan - former FBI agent - is assigned to the case. Her superiors are on the case as the latest victim may be the daughter of Peter Bondurant, an enigmatic billionaire. When Peter pulls strings, Special Agent John Quinn gets assigned to the case. But the FBI's ace profiler of serial killers is the last person Kate wants to work with, not with their troubled history. Now she faces the most difficult role of her career-and her life. For she's the only woman who has what it takes to stop the killer . . . and the one woman he wants next.
Watch out for the next title in the Kovac and Liska crime thriller series
The death of internal affairs investigator Andy Paxton is a potential political bomb for the Minneapolis Police Department. Paxton was investigating a possible cop connection in the brutal murder of another officer. The pressure is on from the top brass to close the case as soon as possible but Sam Kovac is not convinced the case is as straightforward as it appears. As he digs deeper, it is looking very much like Paxton discovered something that got him killed. DUST TO DUST is the next gripping thriller in the series.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hoag (A Thin Dark Line) has a way of sneaking up on the reader in superior thriller tradition, taking her time in revealing monstrous images lurking in the dark corners. The Cremator, a Minneapolis serial killer, has been torturing prostitutes before incinerating them in local parks, but no one pays much attention until it appears that the third victim may be Jillian Bondurant, a billionaire's daughter. Former FBI agent Kate Conlan, now a victim/witness advocate, is enlisted to handle a reluctant teenage witness who claims to have seen the latest torching. Kate's life becomes further complicated when ace FBI profiler John Quinn is called in by Jillian's father. Kate and John share a personal history, he being one of the reasons she left the Bureau five years ago, and they must each contend with their painful past as they work together to catch the diabolical killer who appears to be taunting them at every turn. Hoag uses crisp dialogue effectively to distinguish the many diverse characters, while Kate and John's mirror-image Machiavellian work ethics justify both their mutual attraction and aversion. Devoting equal attention to the mystery of the serial killer's identity and the romantic tension between her engaging protagonists, Hoag does service to both, scripting love scenes worthy of George Clooney and Renee Russo, the Hollywood stars she mentions as look-alikes for her principals. Granting a humanizing dignity to the victims' corpses, she neatly sidesteps the graphic crudeness of some of her competitors, while still providing enough surprise twists and stomach-turning carnage to satisfy any heebie-jeebie enthusiast. Major ad/promo.
