EYE FOR AN EYE

4 stars out of 5

After reading several of the author's books featuring Jessica Daniel without really relating to the Greater Manchester, England, detective investigator, I think I've finally warmed up to her. To be clear, all the books I've read have been very good - it's just that Jessica herself wasn't a character I would be eager to sit down with at a bar and share drinks. This installment, though, won me over; so Jessica, if you ever cross the Pond and land in northeastern Ohio, I'm buying.

How that mental switcheroo came about is a sort of yin-yang thing, actually. There are so many different "plots" going on in this one that it's almost hard to keep the players straight (and the bits with the rock star who thinks a ghost is out to get him and bridezilla-to-be whose fiance has gone missing are, quite honestly, borderline silly). On the other side of the equation, all those story lines provide greater insights into Jessica's background and personality, thus allowing me to get to know, and like, her better - so all's well that ends well. And speaking of endings, as is the author's norm in this series, there's a cliffhanger - but it's not nearly as in-your-face as in previous books.

Jessica is still struggling with the loss of Adam, the love of her life and the victim of a car bombing meant for Jessica. He's been in a hospital in a coma from which he's not expected to recover for quite some time, pitting her hope against reality. She's also desperate to find her teenage friend Bex, a runaway who's been living with Jessica but suddenly went missing. The primary story, though, is the release from mental hospital custody of Damian Walker, who abducted and gruesomely murdered several women 17 years earlier. Deemed "safe" for society, he's been stashed in a sort of witness protection program under a new name. Not long afterward, another woman is murdered in a similar fashion, raising suspicions that Walker is neither safe nor sane. Problem is, he wears a leg monitor 24/7 and clearly never left his house. Among those most upset is Anne, one of Walker's years-ago targets who managed to survive with serious physical and mental injuries.

After yet another woman turns up dead, Jessica and her team are charged with finding out whether Walker is somehow escaping or someone else is trying to frame him. In between, she has to deal with that very annoying bride-to-be - who's managed to make a media spectacle of herself and the cops who aren't helping her - and that rock star who seems to have taken a shine to Jessica. Oh yes, and worry that Bex flew the coop because of something Jessica said or did.

All in all, another satisfying series entry. I thank the publisher, via NetGalley, for the opportunity to read and review it.

Eye for an Eye by Kerry Wilkinson (Pan Macmillan , January 2018; Bookouture, November 2018); 321 pp.