Tuesday, March 25, 2014

What's the 4-1-1? "212" by Alafair Burke



Sorry I've been a little absent from the blog lately.  You know how sometimes that thing that happens "5 days a week" gets in the way of things we really want to be doing, like blogging.

I have managed to get in some reading though.

I've talked before about how much I enjoy Alafair Burke's mysteries since I discovered them last year.  

So, I thought I would work my way back to the beginning of the Ellie Hatcher series before Ms. Burke's newest book ("All Day and Night") comes out in June.

"212" came out swinging.  Non-stop suspense from beginning to end.  If you've got to commute, at least have something great to read while you're on the train.


When a bodyguard is killed in the Manhattan penthouse owned by his billionaire boss, Sam Sparks, the case gets under Detective Ellie Hatcher’s skin. But she has to set aside this unsolved crime—and her suspicions of Sparks, which land her a contempt charge and a night in jail—to investigate the murder of an NYU coed, who was being harassed online, and her roommate. Then a real-estate agent who moonlights as a call girl is found murdered after being tortured in a first-class hotel, and Hatcher and partner J. J. Rogan find a common thread in what seem unrelated cases. In the third in the Ellie Hatcher series (after Dead Connection, 2007, and Angel’s Tip, 2008), Burke skillfully portrays her protagonist’s relationships—with victims’ families and persons of interest; with her partner; with her female boss, Liuetentant Robin Tucker; and, especially with ADA Max Donovan, whose love provides her only respite from the work with which she’s obsessed.