Find Me
O'Connell, Carol.
New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, c2006.
In this 9th outing, sociopathic New York detective Kathy Mallory's personal quest intersects with a hunt for a serial killer known as "Mack the Knife". Following historic Route 66, we're left unsure if the trail Kathy follows will eventually lead her to the killer or her father. This killer has been murdering small children for decades, burying them in unmarked graves along the road. The only clues linking them are missing hands that point to the next gravesite. Now that he's been noticed, new victims (parents of murdered children) are being targeted. An online therapist has arranged a caravan of grieving parents trying to get media attention. The FBI gets involved, trying to use the parents as bait, but seem to be criminally mishandling both evidence and procedure. Partner Riker and friend Charles Butler follow along, initially worried about a dead woman found in Kathy's apartment, then caught up in shepherding the caravan along its route. Much is made of Mallory's "unravelling" and whether she may actually have killed this woman.
Vintage Mallory, even though this novel humanized her somewhat. She's following a journey laid out in a series of letters that we eventually find out are written by her father. Along the way, she pursues a serial killer -- who may or may not be her father...These books are always slow to get into but then you can't put them down. This time the ending was a shocker. Is this the end of the series?