NOW YOU SEE ME

4 stars out of 5

Looking for a new murder/detective series and love characters who have "issues?" This just may be a good place to start. It's the first installment featuring 34-year-old FBI Special Agent Jess Bishop, who brings sins of the past to a whole new level. To that end, she reminds me a bit of J.D. Robb's Lt. Eve Dallas, although Jess tends to be more melodramatic, devoid of emotion and on the whole rather unlikable. Still, she's a hard-working, get-the-job-done detective and an intriguing character I'd like to read more about.

She and her former partner, Jamison Briggs, parted on shaky terms; her current partner, Alex Chan, is a good detective but about as companionable as our next-door neighbor's pooch who growls every time he sees me. Jess isn't fond of him either, but she's adjusting; as the story begins, the two have gone from their Washington, D.C., base to Louisiana. In a bayou there, the torso of a woman has turned up. The head is missing - and since it appears to match the MO of other murders, the agents are concerned that they're on the trail of a serial killer who may be keeping victims' heads as trophies.

Then what to her wondering eyes should appear but Jamison - back from an undercover job and ready for reassignment as Jess's partner. There's a lot of mutual hand-wringing and head games as the two try to come to terms with their earlier break-up and Jamison's new love interest, but professionalism (and an obvious like for each other) eventually win out. As for Alex, he doesn't seem fazed by losing his shotgun-riding status - to him, it's just another crappy day in paradise, I guess - and anyway, enough headless bodies keep turning up to keep his and everyone else's minds on finding the killer.

In the middle of all this, Jess meets Matt Ramsey, a smooth-talking, exceptionally hunky FBI agent who's determined to make an honest woman out of her. True to her emotion-shunning personality, though, he pretty much has to stalk her to get her attention - and even when he succeeds, he isn't able to hold it for long. That's partly because as evidence piles up, a worst-case scenario rears its ugly head: could it be that the murders are somehow related to the sordid past Jess has spent all of her grown-up years trying to hide?

The whole thing was a wild ride all the way to the end, when a few strands are left dangling to whet appetites for the next book. Overall, this definitely was an enjoyable experience for me, though my enthusiasm was dampened a bit by repetition and typos (the latter, I trust, will be corrected before the book is released; I read an advance copy provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review) as well as a few glitches in the story. As hard-nosed as Jess is, for instance, it's really tough to fathom how she (or anyone else) possibly could go out for a run hours after cutting her bare feet by stepping on glass shards. Ouch!

Now You See Me by Kierney Scott (Bookouture, November 2017); 318 pp.