Book Review: "A Killer Among Us" by Lynette Eason

Summary from BN.com: Kit Kenyon is a first-rate hostage negotiator. Noah Lambert is a good detective with excellent instincts. The new partners have hardly had time to get used to each other when they are thrown into a grisly murder case. As evidence mounts up and more victims are found, Kit and Noah realize they are on the hunt for a serial killer. The problem is, he's hunting one of them too.

Kit's job as a negotiator is one that I could not do. The way she is able to keep calm while someone is in state of unsureness and could kill everyone nearby is pretty amazing. You don't really hear too much about negotiators in the news. However after reading this book I am in awe of their ability to stay calm and reason with an unstable person while putting themselves in extreme danger. She does this several times throughout the book including one scenario that could possible kill her own self.

Stories that always take the perspective from the serial killer POV simultaneously creep me out and fascinate me. The killer in this book had major issues about the role of the family which led to the reasons of why he killed his victims. One trait of a psychopath killer that I've found in numerous books is that if it is male, he giggles. Now most men don't giggle when they laugh, so when a guy giggles and there's killing, at least in books he's not all there. I will admit I was in the dark as to who the killer was so I looked in the back. If I hadn't, I would have been clueless until the reveal so in that case, Eason does this very well.

As I had stated after reading the previous book in the series, I had found the secret from the Cash family to be a little too dramatic. It had come out of the nowhere, the revelation of Kit's background and it honestly felt that she was only being introduced in this way so there could be a third book in this series. That being said, the downside to this book was that a lot of those issues feel like they are never really resolved. It's explained why it all happened but Kit never grows a good relationship with her birth mother and she's still harboring resentment towards her adoptive mother. She gets along better with her sisters but the relationship with her father is pretty much nonexistent. Even though she comes to realize how lucky she is to have two sets of family, I didn't feel as if a true relationship between everyone really existed by the end of the book.

Other than this, I enjoyed the story. Kit and Noah have good chemistry together as both partners and a growing relationship. Though I really wonder how many detectives actually have a romantic relationship together and how many actually stay as partners afterward. I'm sad to see the series ending as I feel that Eason blends well the romance with high quality suspense that doesn't stay all neat and tidy. I'll be looking forward to her next series.

A Killer Among Us by Lynette Eason is published by Revell (2011)

This review copy was provided by the publisher

Other books in the Women of Justice series that I've reviewed:

Too Close to Home (Book 1)
Don't Look Back (Book 2)