Synopsis/blurb...
How far can a profound personal loss drive someone toward darkness?
What would it take for you to kill someone for money? And if you did, who—or what—would you have become? These are the question one woman faces when she loses everyone she loves and everything she has. When the opportunity arrives to reinvent herself as a killer for hire, she takes it. She's good at it—and if she doesn't do it, someone else will.
Then everything changes when she learns about a serial killer so horrible she vows to find him and kill him until—overcome by self-doubt—she seeks redemption rather than vengeance.
Fans of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Dexter will love Endings
Having acquired a copy of the second in this series, Exit Strategy (published today) I thought I would see if I could squeeze reading the first book - Endings - into my busy reading schedule. I'm glad I did.
Endings requires a slight suspension of disbelief insofar as we have a slightly unlikely career change for our unnamed female protagonist after a profound loss. Her child and husband were caught in a house fire. Her child died, her husband survived briefly before being put out of his misery. We learn the marriage was possibly in its death throes anyway.
While in the hospital the woman hears a tale of woe from the bed next door and decides to help offer a form of retribution - death in return for money. One job begets another and before long our disconnected, tieless, nothing to live for woman has carved out a connection to an underground network and takes on kills for hire, something she is quite adept about.
While enduring a life of isolation with no friends or surviving relatives in her orbit, she has managed to retain some sense of humanity. A big story breaks about a killer on the loose, William Atwater. Atwater has been abducting and disappearing children. Our main lady decides to do something about it.
I enjoyed the premise of the book. All the while we are in the main character's head and we share her sense of loss, her grief, her anger and rage. We also see her efficiency at work in her new profession. Her methodical planning and her coolness in getting close to her targets and her ability to execute those plans and literally err..... execute.
When she gets a bee in her bonnet about William Atwater, there is a different kind of skillset needed to turn detective in tracking him down; as well as the services of a roving reporter, his team and the visions of a medium.
Like I say there's a few occasions when you have to take a leap of faith and go with the author where she wants to take you. I was more than happy to do so on this occasion. It was my first time trying author, Linda L. Richards' work and definitely not my last.
Exciting, tense, full of action and more than a little violence, also a little bit sad on occasions, but never less than gripping. I really enjoyed it.
4 from 5
Read - May, 2022
Published - 2021
Page count - 305
It does sound violent, Col - more violent than I usually like. That said, though, I think the premise is really interesting, and the narrator/protagonist sounds like an unusual, innovative character. I'm glad this one tickedd so many of the boxes for you.
ReplyDeleteMargot, it was an unusual set-up with the protagonist's identity and back story. I think the violence was matter of fact as opposed to gratuitous, especially when dealing with her work assignments. It becomes a bit more twisted when the killer's crimes are the focus of attention.
DeleteI kind of like the premise, but it seems like it would be both depressing and violent. I have read another book by this author but it was an historical mystery and a good bit lighter.
ReplyDeleteProbably one that's more me than you I think.
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