The Echo Killing: A Mystery

Fifteen years ago, a 12-year-old girl came home from school only to find her mother lying dead on the kitchen floor. She had been stabbed repeatedly ... the killer was never found. Crime Reporter Harper McClain was that child. The murder of her mother is the very reason she chose her profession. She's very good at what she does, the cops respect her for her honesty, sometimes brutal at times. She hears the scanner and off she runs, grabbing her photographer and her notebook. A woman has been found dead and for Harper, this one brings all kinds of memories. The dead woman has been repeatedly stabbed and is positioned on the kitchen floor. Her 12-year-old daughter found her when she arrived home after school. The killings are so similar, Harper thinks her mother's killer has returned. No one believes her... not the Homicide Detective leading this new investigation, not the undercover cop she has a crush on, not her best friend, and not the Lieutenant, who has been her father figure for many years. It's when she decides to investigate on her own that things get really dangerous for her. The cops stop talking to her, the undercover cop warns her, the lead detective threatens to arrest her, her boss threatens to fire her, and someone breaks into her apartment, destroying everything in sight. Sometimes you have to be real careful about what you wish for .... the truth doesn't always set you free. This is an amazingly well written story. This author rates right up there with Last Seen by Rick Mofina and Scoop by Kit Frazier .. all of which were brilliant books. The story is not altogether unique, but so well done that it doesn't matter. Harper is a wonderful series character .... she's gutsy and inquisitive and the passion for her job all but jumps out every time her name is mentioned. The secondary characters lend a lot of credibility to the story. There is a small cliffhanger, but again, this one is so well-written I don't mind waiting for the next book to arrive. I highly recommend this one to anyone who likes crime fiction where the spotlight shines on the reporter. Many thanks to the author / St. Martin's Press - Minotaur Books / Netgalley for the advanced digital copy. Opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

This one took me a bit to get into as the introduction of characters and setting felt a bit slow in the beginning. However, once the story picked up, it made for an interesting read. The book is well-written and the characters are a good mix of likable and not so likable, which is to be expected in a crime mystery. I have to say that Harper frustrated me at times in her dogged determination to find answers regardless of the cost - often jeopardizing not only her own safety and career, but that of others. Nevertheless, I couldn't help but to root for her as she worked to find answers to a brutal murder as well as answers to her own troubled past. The whodunit in this one wasn't hard to figure out, especially with a couple of red herrings being a bit on the obvious side, but the journey kept me turning pages to see if I was right and how it would all play out. The conclusion comes together quite well and there are a couple of unanswered questions that I'm assuming will be addressed in a future book. I did like that our heroine isn't perfect and her personal life isn't all sunshine and roses as so often happens in fiction today. Life is messy and the reality of those messes in Harper's life adds to the realistic emotional feel of the story. All in all, this crime mystery is worth the read and the questions raised at the end have me sufficiently intrigued to check out a future Harper McClain book.