269. Twisted

Twisted by Andrea Kane (Canada ) - (US)
Sloane Burbank, book 1

Pages: 376 pgs.
Ages: 18+
Finished: Dec. 29 , 2009
First Published: Mar. 2008
Genre: romantic thriller
Rating: 4.5/5

First sentence:

She was a true warrior.

Acquired: Received as a 'bonus book' from the publisher along with another book I had requested at the time.

Reason for Reading: Honestly, the cover put me off this for some reason. So it has taken me a while to get around to reading it.

Summary: Sloane Burbank is a former FBI agent who was injured in the line of duty and instead of taking a desk job decided to leave the Bureau until her therapy made her fit for active duty once more. In the meantime she is working as a private consultant for corporations and the police. She is contacted by the family of a childhood friend as a last resort that their daughter has been missing for close to a year and hired to look into the case for them. This one missing person case takes her into a series of related missing women cases, all having even the remotest link to herself, leading officials to believe Sloane is the ultimate target. At the same time the FBI agent in charge is involved in a case of a series of brutal prostitute murders down in Chinatown which may somehow be related to the missing women.

Comment: Wow! This was a stunner! I wish I hadn't waited so long to read this as I would have read the sequel by now too. Two things initially put me off, the cover and the description on the back as a "romantic thriller". I'm not a romance reader and the word had me thinking this might be a bit of fluff, but boy was I wrong!

A very creepy, unusual serial killer is the focus of this book which shifts focus occasionally to the criminal's first hand point of view and then back to the third person narrative of the main plot. This person is very freaky and the whole story of motive that the author has created is very unique and fantastic. I quickly had my eye on a suspect and played into the author's hands all along as I followed her red herrings and was joyfully surprised how wrong I was at the reveal.

Usually, in these thrillers with male/female partners we have s*xual tension or a relationship going on, but the 'romance' writer in the author comes out in this area of the book and there is quite a bit of descriptive s*x in the book that I would rather have done without. Some people would consider it quite graphic, though in the whole realm of what I've read I'd say it gets very close without quite getting to full fledged graphic. For this reason I can't give the book a full rating. I've read a lot of thrillers and this type of 'romance=sex' doesn't sit right with me. Save it for the paranormal romances, I say.

Otherwise, Ms Kane has crafted a taut, unique and very satisfying page turner of a thriller. I will be reading the sequel soon.