A Forgotten Kill by Isabella Maldonado
Daniela Vega #2

Seeing patterns and connections is what Daniela has been trained to do. Having her mother speak for the first time in nearly a decade and say something that makes her question who really killed her father…well…that had her wanting to see the old case files and in order to do so, her special skillset is bartered in exchange for the information. Little did she know that there might be overlap in her father’s and the other murder cases.

What I liked:
* Dani: Ex-Army Ranger with lethal skills, intelligent, team player, loves her brother and sister, works for the FBI, strategic thinker, is growing on me
* Finding out more about her backstory including who killed her father
* Learning more about the process of breaking codes
* Hearing a bit about the backstory of the serial killer – didn’t make me like or sympathize or understand the killings but it was interesting
* Not really feeling like I *know* Dani or what makes her tick but hoping to find out more about her – does she have friends, what does she do in her spare time, does she have hobbies or date or???
* The police procedural aspects of the story and how the police and FBI worked together
* That I wasn’t SURE who the serial killer was until Dani figured it out
* Not knowing what is going on with her supervisor and how that will play out in the future
* All of it except…

What I didn’t like:
* Who and what I was meant not to like
* Trying to wrap my mind around the killer’s motivation
* The way Dani’s aunt treated her

Did I like this book? Yes
Would I read more in this series? Yes

Thank you to Net Galley and Thomas & Mercer for the ARC – This is my honest review.

4-5 Stars ( )

Isabella Maldonado has become one of my favorite writers of crime- thriller- action packed everything. In this second installment of the Daniela Vega series, Maldonado has tasked her code breaking heroine with a personal as well as public battle. It is a killer of a story, literally and figuratively. Vega assesses the situations, makes her choices, and is prepared to live or die with the consequences .

Whip smart, physically able, tactically aware I can’t help thinking that there is an awful lot of Ms. Maldonado in her heroine. While there is a lot of action, there is a equal amount of cerebral gymnastics and a plot that keeps coming at you from so many angles. As in the author’s other series, this story is tightly crafted, never flinching and almost impossible to set aside until the last page is turned. Few writers do this genre better than Isabella Maldonado.

So many thanks to Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley for a copy. ( )

FBI Agent Dani Vega is on administrative leave pending the results of an investigation into her previous case when she gets a call from the doctors at Bellevue: her mother is showing signs of lucidity. Catatonic since the gruesome murder of her husband and Dani's father when Dani was seventeen, she is believed to be the one who killed him. Dani walked in on the murder and was instrumental in the case that led to her mother's incarceration.

When her mother says that she didn't murder her husband, Dani decides to look into the case again. She goes to the NYC Police Detective who investigated. He agrees to give her the files on her father's case if she will look at some of his open cases to see if he has a serial killer. Dani is a former Army Ranger who was trained to analyze patterns. She determines, rather quickly, that not only are the cases related, but that they are only part of a long string of murders all perpetrated by the same serial killer.

This discovery leads to the formation of a task force between the FBI and the various police forces of the places in NYC where the killer has operated. The investigation is tense and uses lots of new tools to link the 31 murders. But the killer has caught wind of the investigation and doesn't want Dani and the task force to succeed in stopping him.

This was an excellent and fast-paced thriller. Depending on how you feel about characters who are ultra-competent, the characters are interesting. Dani, herself, is a former Army Ranger with well-honed physical skills and with an almost preternatural ability to solve puzzles. But she is also a grieving daughter who lost her father to murder and was taken in by an aunt who was emotionally abusive to her because of her resemblance to her mother whom the aunt feels stole her baby brother from her. She feels guilt that her eyewitness testimony resulted in her mother's commitment to Bellevue.

I enjoyed this story and couldn't put it down until I reached the conclusion. ( )