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Kovac and Liska take on multiple twisted cases as #1 New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag explores a murder from the past, a murder from the present, and a life that was never meant to be. As the bitter weather of late fall descends on Minneapolis, Detective Nikki Liska is restless, already bored with her new assignment to the cold case squad. She misses the rush of pulling an all-nighter and the sense of urgency of hunting a killer on the loose. Most of all she misses her old partner, Sam Kovac. Kovac is having an even harder time adjusting to Liska’s absence but is distracted from his troubles by an especially brutal double homicide: a prominent university professor and his wife, bludgeoned and hacked to death in their home with a ceremonial Japanese samurai sword. Liska’s case—the unsolved murder of a decorated sex crimes detective—is less of a distraction: Twenty-five years later, there is little hope for finding the killer who got away.
Meanwhile, Minneapolis resident Evi Burke has a life she only dreamed of as a kid in and out of foster care: a beautiful home, a loving family, a fulfilling job. But a danger from her past is stalking her idyllic present, bent on destroying the perfect life she was never meant to have.
As the trails of two crimes a quarter of a century apart twist and cross, Kovac and Liska race to find answers before a killer strikes again.
Kovac and Liska take on multiple twisted cases as #1 New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag explores a murder from the past, a murder from the present, and a life that was never meant to be. As the bitter weather of late fall descends on Minneapolis, Detective Nikki Liska is restless, already bored with her new assignment to the cold case squad. She misses the rush of pulling an all-nighter and the sense of urgency of hunting a killer on the loose. Most of all she misses her old partner, Sam Kovac. Kovac is having an even harder time adjusting to Liska’s absence but is distracted from his troubles by an especially brutal double homicide: a prominent university professor and his wife, bludgeoned and hacked to death in their home with a ceremonial Japanese samurai sword. Liska’s case—the unsolved murder of a decorated sex crimes detective—is less of a distraction: Twenty-five years later, there is little hope for finding the killer who got away.
Meanwhile, Minneapolis resident Evi Burke has a life she only dreamed of as a kid in and out of foster care: a beautiful home, a loving family, a fulfilling job. But a danger from her past is stalking her idyllic present, bent on destroying the perfect life she was never meant to have.
As the trails of two crimes a quarter of a century apart twist and cross, Kovac and Liska race to find answers before a killer strikes again.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the book1
November Minneapolis, MN Twenty-five years ago
Ted Duffy loved to swing the axe. He loved the motion—pulling back, stretching his body taut like a crossbow then releasing the power in his muscles. He probably put more into it than was necessary to get the job done. He didn’t care. This was his workout, his therapy, his outlet for the toxic emotions that built up inside him all week.
Swing, crack! Swing, crack!
There was a rhythm to it he found soothing, and a violence he found satisfying.
Day in and day out he dealt with people he would sooner have sent to hell: the dregs of society, sickos and perverts. The things he’d seen would make the average citizen vomit and give them nightmares. He lived in a horror story, fighting a losing battle with no end in sight.
He’d been working Sex Crimes for seven years now. His initial efforts to remain detached from the grime of it had gradually worn him out. His plan to do a brief turn in the unit then use it as a springboard to a more prestigious position in another department had eventually crumbled and collapsed in on itself.
Turned out he was damned good at the job that sucked him into the filthy gutter of human depravity. And the longer he did it, the better he became. And the better he became, the harder it was to escape. The harder it was to escape, the bigger the stain on the very fabric of his soul. The deeper the stain soaked in, the greater his understanding of the minds of the predators he hunted. The greater his understanding, the more his idealistic self chipped away, the more the filth soaked into him until the only thing he recognized of his original self was the face in the mirror every morning—and even that was eroding.
He had always been a good-looking guy, with chiseled features and smooth skin and a thick head of jet-black hair. The face that stared back at him these days as he shaved had aged twice as fast in half as much time as his twin brother’s. Every day the lines seemed deeper, the eyes emptier, the hair thinner and grayer. He was becoming something he didn’t want to recognize, inside and out.
And so he chopped wood on the stump of an elm tree out behind his house.
Swing, crack! Swing, crack!
He lived in an older neighborhood of square two-story clapboard houses with front porches that had mostly been closed in against the brutal Minnesota winters, and backyards separated by tall, weathered privacy fences. His property backed onto a large, rambling park that surrounded one the city’s many lakes. The park let him have the illusion of living in the woods.
Mr. Lumberjack, living in the woods, swinging his axe.
Swing, crack! Swing, crack!
Despite the cold wet weather, he was sweating inside the layers of clothing he wore—thermal underwear, a flannel shirt, a down-filled vest. He hated this time of year. Every day was shorter than the last. Night began to fall in late afternoon. Winter could arrive on any given day, and stay until April. They had had an ice storm on Halloween and a blizzard on Veteran’s Day, followed by three days of rain that had caused flash flooding in low-lying areas. The odd day of stunning, electric blue skies and a paltry few lingering fall colors couldn’t make up for the stretches of bleak gray or the damp cold that knifed to the bone. It buried its blade between his shoulders as he wiped the moisture from his face on the sleeve of his shirt, and hoisted the axe again.
Swing, crack!
The temperature was dropping quickly. The intermittent spitting rain that had...
Reviews-
November 23, 2015 Bestseller Hoag’s riveting fifth novel featuring Minneapolis detectives Nikki Liska and Sam Kovac (after 2013’s The 9th Girl) finds Nikki transferred to the newly funded cold case unit, where she hopes more regular hours will allow her to spend additional time with her adolescent sons. Her first case lacks leads and evidence: the 20-year-old homicide of a sex crimes detective shot down in his own yard by rifle. The razor-tongued Liska attacks the case with her usual dogged persistence, despite her initial hesitation, and tracks down old witnesses in the hopes of uncovering a new direction for the investigation. Meanwhile, Sam and his new partner look into the brutal murder of a university professor and his wife—by samurai sword. The two cases ultimately collide as the body count rises. Hoag has a gift for creating dynamic suspense, three-dimensional characters, and sharp dialogue. Newcomers and fans alike will find this fast-moving police procedural intensely satisfying. Agent: Andrea Cirillo, Jane Rotrosen Agency.
December 15, 2015 In Hoag's (Cold, Cold Heart, 2015, etc.) latest, Minneapolis homicide detective Sam Kovac has been separated from his longtime partner, the diminutive yet hard-charging Nikki Liska. Nikki wanted more time with her teenage sons, so she sought assignment to the department's new cold case unit, where she's intrigued by the decades-old unsolved murder of Ted Duffy, a sex crimes detective, despite push back from a retired detective close to his family. Sam's first case without Nikki is the double murder--"raw animal violence"--of Lucien Chamberlain, an Asian studies professor, and his wife, Sondra, who were slashed to death with the professor's own antique samurai weapons. Chamberlain was an egotistical, misogynistic megalomaniac. Even his adult children hated him. Son Charles is damned by OCD and his father's unachievable expectations. Daughter Diana is bipolar and hypersexual. Nikki's and Sam's cases become parallel stories of anger, isolation, ambition, violence, revenge, and perversion. With Duffy's widow married to his prosperous twin brother and reluctant to cooperate, Nikki has no lead until she discovers Evi, Duffy's long-ago foster child. Sam has too many suspects, including an ex-con working for a handyman service, Charles and Diana, and professor Ken Sato, Diana's lover and Lucien's rival for department chair. Hoag adds depth to the tale with secondary characters like the preening Sato; fragile librarian Jennifer Duffy, broken and isolated by her father's murder; and the new homicide lieutenant, Joan Mascherino, who's tough-minded and empathetic, with knife-keen intelligence hidden under a prim personality intolerant of swearing. With an ear for sardonic cop dialogue and humor--Sondra Chamberlain regularly ended her day with a "bottle of Chateau Blackout"--Hoag livens up these two already fast-paced, ripped-from-the-headlines mysteries with interesting factoids about such things as the history of female samurai. This tense psychological thriller shows Hoag at the top of her game.
COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
December 15, 2015 This is the latest entry in the popular Kovac-Liska series, but the two are no longer working together for the Minneapolis police homicide unit. Detective Nikki Liska is now with the new cold-case squad in hopes of spending more time with her teenage sons. Detective Sam Kovac is lost without her but learning to deal with a young, green partner on a new case: a brutal home invasion. An Asian-studies professor and his wife were killed by a samurai sword from the professor's collection. Liska is assigned a 25-year-old murder of a highly honored sex-crimes detective, but for some reason, his family does not want the case reopened. There is no DNA, which is the primary resource to help solve cold cases, but Liska is determined to do the best she can anyway, even while envying her old partner his new case. This is a dark, gritty thriller, but Hoag manages to lighten it up now and then with some black humor. A real page-turner that is sure to please her legion of fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)
August 1, 2015
The No. 1 New York Times best-selling Hoag brings back detectives Nikki Liska and Sam Kovac, but they're no longer partners, Nikki having departed for the relative boredom of the cold-case squad so that she could spend more time with her sons. Her case, Sam's hacked-to-bits double murder investigation, and Evi Burke's awful blast from the past make for a lot of tension.
Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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