Thursday, February 25, 2016

L. J. Sellers: Secrets to Die For

 
This is the second book in the Detective Jackson series but I don't think that you need to read it first book The Sex Club as this book only refers back to it at the beginning and the main relationships that comes out of the first book is once again only at the beginning and very much in the background. 

Raina Hughes is a young social worker who wants to protect all the children under her charge. When she arrives at a trailer to protect a child from abusive and drug addicted parents things turn deadly. Detective Wade Jackson arrives at the same location later the next day, now investigating Raina's murder but there may be more to her murder than a home check gone wrong. There is a serial rapist in Eugene, Oregon and looks like he may have just upgraded to murder.

The beginning of this book is really strong and will have you hooked within the first few pages and really set the tone for the rest of the book. Overall, this book was good, an easy and fast paced read. I personally wanted the case to be a little bit more complex than Sellers portrayed in this book and this is mainly due to the fact that the main suspect that Det. Jackson is looking for is already known by the readers (there are chapters from his point of view) and it take the majority of the book for Jackson to make the connection.

I like that sellers likes to take on different topics in the books in this series (see the Sex club review for the first book). In this book it is about a man who rapes lesbian women (eventually kills one) due to the fact that they are lesbian, though his reason for doing it is not something original, it is not a topic I have read often before in a book. I also appreciated that Sellers included chapters from the perpetrators point of view as it gave a more in-depth reason for his reason and who and why he was after his next victim. It was also interesting that the police themselves in this book avoid the line of questioning in regards to the victims being lesbian on two basis; that they the police were uncomfortable about asking those questions and the physical look of the victims were not what they believed lesbians look like and for these reason the cases did not go in the direction that they should have. I think that it was great that Sellers highlighted these aspects in her novel.

There was not a lot of character development of Jackson in this book as there was in the first, except for the fact that he does put his work above all else at times. There are some secondary relationships with his daughter and girlfriend in the background but they are not really expanded on from the first book (they are pretty prominent in the first book) and I hope that Sellers does bring them more to the forefront further in this series.

I like that Sellers takes chances with the topics of crime and victims in this series so far. While I wanted the plot to be a little bit more complex and not quite as predictable, I still enjoyed reading this book. I like Sellers as an indie author and I would continue on in this series.

Enjoy!!!
If You Like This,
Check These Out Too:
  http://j9books.blogspot.ca/2012/03/angela-gerst-crack-in-everything.html  http://j9books.blogspot.ca/2013/05/sohpie-littlefield-bad-day-for-sorry.html

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