It is a mystery how I even came by this book. I found it on my to-be-read shelf. Maybe one of you guys recommended it to me. I don't even know how long it's been on the shelf, but I picked it up the other night and what a treat! This is a nice meaty story about San Francisco Homicide Detective Kate Gillespie. Her partner disappears just after his wife turns up as the latest victim of a serial slasher killer. It's a very good story with good characters. Burcell appears to have one other book that doesn't sound as interesting and is out of print. I hope she's working on another one like this one. ( )

An interesting book for sure. Burcell seems to like having complicated and intricate plots. After a bit I lost track of what exactly all of them were. There was the Doc's murder, allegedly by her cop husband (and the main character Kate Gillespie's partner). A guy that is found in a freezer, not to mention a hunky Internal Affairs Lieutenant.

The main character is a strongly written one, though I'd love to have found a bit more about Gillespie's family, but it's only the first book in the series, so, I guess I'll have to wait.

The secondary characters were all well written and interesting. Because of the involvement of IA (or as it's called int he book Management Control) the reader is kept guessing about who's on which side, not to mention figuring out how many sides there are to begin with.

A definite must read for those who like police procedural, especially ones that keep the reader guessing. ( )