This is the third book following FBI Agent Angel Blondeaux and we follow her as she's assigned to a new case investigating a ritualistic murder of 6 women. When a new woman, Sonja, comes into Angel's life, she initially thinks this is her chance to move on and maybe have a relationship. But when Sonja's connection to the murders is uncovered, Angel realizes this mystery is darker and more twisted than she realized.
As this is the third book in the series, there are slight spoilers for books 1 and 2. Each book does have a standalone investigation, but some of the fallout from those investigations does cross into the other books. In this case, we get Angel interacting more with some of her family members we saw in book 1 and with a friend we see in book 2. Being able to see these interactions and get some more details of Angel and her personal life is exactly the reason why I enjoyed this book more than book 2. And, based on the tease of a cliffhanger ending we got in book 3, it seems like we'll continue to get more family drama development into book 4.
I really enjoyed the way the investigation played out in regards to reader expectations. I found it incredibly obvious from the get-go what Sonja's connection to the case would be but the investigation plot hadn't gotten there yet. I was getting a bit worried that this connection would be the big twist reveal at the end. And while I think that would have worked pretty well from an overall plot perspective, I would have found it incredibly unsatisfying. Thankfully, Sonja's connection was uncovered around the 50% mark and from there on I didn't really have any guesses as to how the rest of the investigation would play out. I did really enjoy the solution to this mystery/investigation and enjoyed all the steps it took to get there. Sometimes with these police procedurals, the investigation comes to a bit of a standstill until one character (usually the main character) has some sort of epiphany. In this case, there was a little bit of plot convenience that I'll explain later but overall the investigation was pretty consistently moving from point to point. It also had a good number of times where the investigation would loop back to a previous person or point with additional information which I think makes for a more engaging read.
The characters were fantastic and I think really shined in this book. I loved these established relationships and how much of a team they really felt like. There was some great banter and relationship development in the investigation team that felt more fun to read than a typical police procedural book. As mentioned above, we do get to see some characters that we saw in previous books and build on those relationships. There were also some characters we meet in the investigation that felt like they toed the line of being caricatures but I absolutely loved them. Again, they injected some more fun into this read than I was expecting. One of these caricature-characters was an FBI agent who we didn't see investigating but would occasionally come in with little tidbits of information that they got from a source and that would prod the investigation along. I did find that this did feel overly convenient at times, but overall it fit this world we have followed so I wasn't overly bothered.
Overall, this was another great entry in the Angel Blondeaux series and thanks to the cliffhanger-y ending, I can't wait for book 4.
Thanks to BookSirens and the Author for the ARC. Publication date was January 1, 2023
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