Canadian author Kelley Armstrong is best known for her supernatural fantasy stories, but her thriller Exit Strategy is about ex-cop, now professional hit-woman, Nadia Stafford. She owns and runs a lakeside lodge in Ontario, Canada but to keep it afloat she does contract hits on career criminals for a New York Mafia family. But when another hit-man turns into a serial killer, she teams up with her mentor, Jack and a number of other professionals to shut this serial killer down before he draws too much attention to their profession or their identities.

There is plenty of excitement and tension during the course of the story, including the sexual tension between Nadia and Jack. As the hunt continues, the serial killing escalates and the murderer starts to make demands that are impossible to meet. Nadia is a true kick-ass heroine certainly holding her own with Jack and his cronies. She is meticulous about all details involving her hit jobs, and this attention to detail seems to also affect the author as the story at times appears to be overly detailed and very carefully crafted.

Although being 50 or so pages too long, Exit Strategy was a fun read and with interesting characters like Nadia and Jack, I can see why the author wrote a sequel. I enjoyed my time spend with these anti-heroes who kill for a living but never-the-less have a code of honor amongst themselves. ( )

Kelley Armstrong takes the hit-man trope and twists it until it screams.

Instead of a laconic, male, loner, working on a pay-per-kill basis, we get a female ex-cop, Nadia Stafford, who has a strong social network and the front of house skills to keep the guests at her nature lodge happy but who subsidizes her business by doing hits for a Mafia family. This is then twisted again when the plot turns out to be about a hitman hunting hitmen, who then has to be hunted by Nadia. The final twist, and the one that made me smile, is that Nadia lives in rural Canada and commutes south to the USA to go to practice her trade: so much for Canadians being polite and non-violent.

Kelley Armstrong sets her trope twists into high relief by making Nadia's mentor, Jack, into the classic "I'm too laid-back to complete a sentence and too reserved to express an emotion" loner male.

"Exit Strategy" gets off to a brisk start with the first hit happening almost immediately. The action is fast and credible. Nadia is well enough drawn to make me curious about her and to want to understand why she does what she does.

I felt the book lost pace in the middle and focused too much on the craft of killing people and not enough on helping me understand what makes these killers tick.

I enjoyed Nadia. She's likeable, even though she kills people for money. She's smart and brave and has personal integrity.

I did not enjoy Jack. I found his partly completed sentences, his emotional reticence, and his moody self-disapproval tiresome.

Kelley Armstrong got the book back on track for the final quarter, with some plot surprises, some tense, well-crafted, action scenes and a credible, satisfying denouement.

"Exit Strategy" is the first book in a series that currently has three titles in it. It suffered a little from that "I need to set up the situation with lots of exposition" problem but was still a good read. I expect the next book, "Made To Be Broken" to get the series into its stride. ( )

I usually don't like Kelley Armstrong's books, but this one was pretty good. I especially enjoyed how Nadia didn't fawn over the Strong Male Character. ( )

This is the first book in the only Armstrong series I haven’t read, the Nadia Stafford series. There are three books in this series. I really enjoyed this book a lot. It provided an excellent mystery and intriguing characters. Previous to reading this series I have read all of Armstrong’s other series; my least favorite of her series were the Women of the Otherworld series (only read the first three books) and her Blackwell Pages series (only read the first book). I have pretty much adored everything else.

Nadia is an ex-cop turned hitwoman who also owns a nature lodge in Canada. She basically takes on the hit jobs to pay for upkeep on her lodge when things are tight. However, when a serial killer starts rampaging around the country her mentor, Jack, calls to see if she would be willing to join a team of assassins set on finding out who the killer is and taking him out.

While there are some well done action scenes in this novel the focus is more on the strategy of planning a hit and the interesting people that are drawn to this sort of profession. Nadia and Jack are both fairly mysterious characters and it was fun to learn about them and what makes them tick.

Nadia is an amazing protagonist; she’s gone through a lot in her life but has worked through a lot of the issues she’s faced pretty well. She incredibly smart, savvy, and makes good logical decisions throughout the book...while still having some weak spots to work through. I really liked her a lot. Jack is a mystery throughout, but we start to slowly learn about him as the book progresses. There really isn’t a lot of romance in here; this book is more about the mystery of the serial killer and about assassins trying to build trusting relationships with each other.

Those who have read Armstrong’s other series may notice some parallels between these characters and other characters in her series. I realize this series came before the others. However, some aspects of Jack reminded me a lot of Gabriel from the Cainsville series. I also noticed that Nadia shared a lot of traits with Casey Duncan from the Rockton series. That being said that characters are very unique in their own ways. Armstrong does an excellent job of writing an intelligent thriller that has excellent pacing and action but also tackles a lot of psychological issues.

Overall I thought this book was just perfect. It was incredibly hard for me to put down and I raced right through it. I loved the complex plot, the characters, the action scenes, the psychological aspects, and the pacing. I thought the whole thing was wonderfully done and have already went out and purchased the second book in the series. I would recommend to those who enjoy psychological thrillers with assassins and characters that are easy to engage with and interesting. ( )

I've been a big fan of Kelley Armstrong since her early years of writing the Otherworld series. I love that she has branched out from the paranormal to other genres and this series about a female hitman (hit-woman?) from Canada did not disappoint. I'm not sure why I put off starting this series for so long but I plan to read the other two sometime this year. ( )