Book Review: Cause To Kill

Cause To Kill: Homicide Detective Avery Black has been through hell. Once a top criminal defense attorney, she fell from grace when she managed to get a brilliant Harvard professor off-only to watch him kill again. She lost her husband and her daughter, and her life fell apart around her.

Trying to redeem herself, Avery has turned to the other side of the law. Working her way up the ranks, she has reached Homicide Detective, to the scorn of her fellow officers, who still remember what she did, and who will always hate her.

Yet even they cannot deny Avery's brilliant mind, and when a disturbing serial killer strikes fear into the heart of Boston, killing girls from elite colleges, it is Avery that they turn to. It is Avery's chance to prove herself, to finally find the redemption she craves. And yet, as she is soon to find out, Avery has come up against a killer as brilliant and daring as she.

In this game of psychological cat and mouse, women are dying with mysterious clues, and the stakes could not be higher. A frantic race against time leads Avery through a series of shocking and unexpected twists-culminating in climax that even Avery could not imagine.

My Review

*** 3 STARS ***

First book of the year done. While I enjoyed Cause To Kill, I wasn’t overly wowed by it. Because I am trying books out of my preferred genre, I went into reading this with an open mind. On top of that, I like suspense/thrillers so it wasn’t a stretch for me to enjoy this book. My issue was the main character, Avery.

I didn’t like her. Not even a little. I was happy to see a strong female lead as the main character for this series, but she just didn’t do it for me. I get because of her history, she had something to prove, but the huge chip she had on her shoulder made it hard to really empathize with.  Her every interaction with the other characters was the same. She judged, looked down her nose at, and generally seemed to go out of her way to piss people off.  And I don’t understand how she made it to detective with how she did police work. She had zero regard for procedure, or authority and just basically did what she wanted when she wanted because she was on to something. She was too robotic, uncaring, and full of herself. After what happened while she was a lawyer, I’d think she’d be a little more humble, but nope, not even a little bit. One scene in particular that ticked me off was her going to parent’s house of the last victim. There was no reason for that, I don’t care what she said to herself to justify why she was ‘asking permission’ I just thought it was beyond tactless. After that I was over her and all her other antics.

On the upside, the plot was good. That kept me interested in wanting to know what came next. I liked the mystery of hunt in tracking down the serial killer.  I like crime dramas and getting into the head of the villain. Learning their thoughts and motivations has an appeal so I was happy to see why the killer did what he did for the little time we were allowed in his head. I enjoyed the time spent with him more than the time with Avery and wished there was more. I would have enjoyed learning all of his motivations through him directly instead of being told why through the police.

I’m not sure if I’ll read more of this series. Avery just grates on my nerves too much and the other characters in the book weren’t memorable enough for me to read to see how they fair in the remaining books.