Publisher Description
FBI profiler Karen Vail is haunted by a serial killer from her rookie days in a “pulse-pounding” thriller by a USA Today bestselling author (Providence Journal).
New York City: home to world-renowned museums, theater, restaurants, iconic sports franchises. Central Park. Wall Street. And an infamous serial killer who’s terrorized the Big Apple for decades.
The year is 1995 and the NYPD has just graduated a promising new patrol officer named Karen Vail. The rookie’s first day on the job is anything but easy when she finds herself at the crime scene of a young woman murdered in an unusual manner. Vail is unsure of what she’s looking at or what it means—but it’s a case that will weigh on her mind for nearly twenty years.
As the years pass, Vail’s career takes unexpected twists and turns—as does the case that’s come to be known as Hades. Now a skilled FBI profiler, will Vail be in a better position to catch the killer? Or will Hades prove to be Karen Vail’s hell on earth?
The character who has captivated readers worldwide—and who won the praise of literary giants Michael Connelly, James Patterson, and Nelson DeMille—returns in a story that captures the experiences that shaped the revered profiler and made her the top cop she is today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jacobson's intriguing sixth Karen Vail novel (after 2013's No Way Out) chronicles the first case that his heroine handled as a rookie NYPD patrol officer. In 1995, Vail views her first murder victim, a woman savagely attacked in a Manhattan brownstone. Sgt. Carmine Russo, a seasoned homicide detective, acts as Vail's mentor in what develops into a serial killer case. The killings continue over the years, always with the same telltale MO and lack of meaningful evidence. Meanwhile, in a tragic story that parallels Vail's rise to successful FBI profiler, a fight at an Astoria, Queens, bowling alley in 1973 starts a downward spiral that eventually crushes two immigrant Greek families and colors the childhoods of brother and sister Cassandra and Dimitri and their friend Niklaus. Readers will have little trouble figuring out the killer's identity, but series fans will appreciate the extensive background information that details Vail's growth as an investigator.