My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The search for a kidnapped child leads a courageous railway cop down a twisted trail of murder.
It’s been five months since Special Agent Sydney Parnell survived a violent confrontation with a gang of brutal thugs, an encounter that left her physically and emotionally scarred. Deep down, Sydney fears she isn’t ready for another investigation. But when a woman is murdered on the train tracks and a child is kidnapped, she knows she’s the only one who can lead the hunt for the killer. While Denver police and the FBI chase down blind alleys, Sydney focuses on a single cryptic clue left behind at the crime scene—one that will send her down a path of greed, violence, and long-ago love.
With Denver beset by a series of monsoonlike thunderstorms that threaten to flood the city, Sydney and her K9 partner, Clyde, must wade through a murky trail of murder that stretches back thirty years—all to rescue a child…and catch a killer with a long memory and an insatiable appetite for destruction.
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I read Blood on the Tracks last year and I loved it! So, I was pretty thrilled to get the chance to read the sequel, Dead Stop. Special Agent Sydney Parnell is a tough railway cop that together with her K9 partner Clyde has to save the only survivor of a brutal home invasion, a little girl. At first, is it hard to see what made the killer choose to kill everyone in the family, and kidnap the little girl. Is this because of some past transgression by the mother or father? Or likes the answers even further back in time? It seems that Sydney has to follow a trail that leads back in time to find the answers, but she has to do it quickly, a little girl's life is in danger, and who knows if the killer will stop at that...
Special Agent Sydney Parnell may have survived the confrontation in the last book, but she has added a six more ghosts to the list. And, I mean that literally. Her PTSD has resulted in that she sees ghosts. So, yes she has some problem and all this makes her such a fabulous character. Damaged and with pretty bad war memories, among that the memories of her lover, Doug, that never made it home, all that she has left of him is his dog that she has bonded with. Now she has kind of moved on with Detective Mike Cohen, although she's not quite there yet, she has moved in with him, but she can't bring herself to let Dough go just yet.
The case is a hard one, with 3 brutal deaths, but will add more deaths along the way as Sydney desperately tries to find out the truth before the time runs out for the little girl. I found the story engrossing, a sad tale about man's ambitions that crushes lives and have repercussions several years later. The first book story may have gotten to me a bit more, but this is an excellent book that I recommend warmly!
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