Twisted (Tracers #5) by Laura Griffin

Synopsis

“Motive, opportunity, and no alibi – it seems close to a slam-dunk. But while rookie detective Allison Doyle’s department has ID’d a suspect in a young woman’s vicious murder, she is uneasy. Then legendary FBI profiler Mark Wolfe shows up with a startling theory: if he’s right, the real murderer is an elusive psychopath just days away from another kill.

Using Allison’s contacts at the Delphi Center crime lab, Wolfe is finally in striking distance of the monster he’s pursued for ten years. Except that as they work together, Wolfe finds the ambitious, stubborn woman a tempting distraction. And with this brutal predator, every thread of evidence can make the difference between being the hunter…and the prey.”

-Synopsis from Goodreads

Review

*spoilers ahead!*

Twisted is book five in the Tracers series. I know that I say this about every book in this series after I finish reading it, but I think this one might be my favorite!

What I liked the most about this book is that right off the bat we meet Mark Wolfe and get his insight on the latest crime in San Marcos, specifically his theory that it’s likely connected to a string of serial killings from the last decade. If the pattern holds, San Marcos PD has less than two weeks to find the killer before he strikes again on his regular day of November 19th.

I am still unclear as to why local law enforcement has such an issue with federal law enforcement working on their cases with them, but at any rate, no one was happy to see Mark Wolfe show up. Except of course, Allison Doyle, who was planning to use him to finagle her way onto the task force.

I knew I was going to like Allison after reading Snapped, when we first meet her as a rookie detective with San Marcos PD. In Twisted she’s still trying to prove herself as worthy of being one of the San Marcos PD detectives, but it’s hard when she doesn’t have a case to work on, and some people think she’s gotten special treatment because she’s a woman. For those reasons, I already like Allison and wanted to see her succeed.

However, she made some decisions in this book that drove me crazy, namely when she went to see David Moss in prison after lying to Mark about it. I was just as angry as Mark was when he showed up and was told that “the detective had already arrived” and she was sitting there like bait! Ugh. It was hard to see how that situation went down, knowing it could have been 100% preventable.

The ending was so intense; here is where it always gets so suspenseful that I have to set aside an entire afternoon to read the last hundred or so pages because there is literally never a good stopping point. As soon as Allison got out of her truck and walked up to the suspect’s house, I knew what was going to happen. I was really hoping she’d call up Mark and tell him where she was, but of course she didn’t. It was such a nail-biter, not knowing if Mark would get there in time, but the way it played out with Jonah helping to save Allison and ultimately catch the suspect made for a perfect ending. And of course, Mark’s decision at the end of the book was pretty sweet, too 🙂

As always, it was fun to see certain characters (like Kelsey, Mia, Ric, and Jonah) make appearances! There was some very clear foreshadowing for Kelsey in the next book, Scorched, so I can’t wait to read that one soon and see what she and Gage get up to next!