Review: UNSUB by Meg Gardiner

Publisher Dutton
Length 378 pages
Format hardcover
Published 2017
Series Unsub #1
My Copy borrowed from the library 

An unknown suspect has terrorized two generations with highly publicized displays of violence and an unabashed regard for human life. The rein of bloodletting first began in the 1990’s with law enforcement, in particular Detective Max Hendrix, unable to make headway into the spate of brutal killings. Now, his daughter, Caitlin, also a police officer in the present day setting, relives the nightmare in real-time which ultimately cost her father his family and job as the killer with the moniker ‘The Prophet’ makes a menacing return to the macabre.

Part cat-and-mouse, part police procedural, all high octane thrills, Unsub is popular fiction written to entertain while inducing fits of paranoia for those bumps in the night. This isn’t a book for the squeamish as author Meg Gardiner manages to incorporate many inventive ways of killing off characters.   

Like most books of this nature, there’s a personal element to the case and here it’s the Hendrix family. I liked the generational crime linkage and thought the present day and past criminal elements blended together seamlessly. Max is a complex character, though while not at the coalface of the present day investigation, he’s very much a large player in the broader plot. His daughter works in a complementary fashion to Max; she’s the investigator full of vigor and drive, Max is essentially a washed up ‘has-been’ - on the surface that is, the almost ying/yang effect works very well.

My rating: 4/5, this is the start of what promises to be a very entertaining thriller/crime series. I look forward to reading more of Caitlin’s cases, especially if the crime contains as much cryptic clues and mystery surrounding the antagonist as this one.