I reviewed Natalie Walters's 'Fatal Code' last year and found it a pleasant surprise. It's the second in the SNAP Agency series and, while I expect I'd have benefitted from reading the first before the second, it didn't seem to matter too much. However, while I liked the romantic angle more than I'd have expected going in, the actual thriller aspect was convenient and routine. It felt like a random episode of a random investigative show on TV, just with strong leads who share plenty of charisma rather than nondescript leads and charismatic supporting actors.

Well, here's another thriller from Revell that I'm reading before the earlier books in a series, but it's by Lynette Eason, who's clearly a much better writer. However, she's also the author of a whole slew of thriller series with stunningly generic names, ones that I might expect to see pop out of an online thriller series name generator. Let me press the button a few times. 'Blue Justice'. 'Hidden Identity'. 'Elite Guardians'. Yep, all Eason's. This one belongs to the 'Extreme Measures' series, so it's apparently interchangeable with all the others, and it's the third episode so far, following 'Life Flight' and 'Crossfire'.

If you're wondering from those titles whether Lynette Eason is a friendly pseudonym for an AI fed on a strict diet of the CBS primetime programming schedule, then I should probably point out that you're wrong. Sure, you're mostly wrong because the overt template here is 'Prodigal Son', which was a Fox show, but AI's don't write as effortlessly as Eason does and I'm not counting on that any time soon. This is a human author and a good one, however generic the titles that are slapped on her covers, and that applies just as much for the serial killer investigation as the romance that we watch be constantly interrupted throughout.

I have little idea what the previous two volumes focused on, but this one is about Grace Billingsley, who's a behavioural analyst with the FBI. She's highly experienced in her field, but but she's new to being a Supervisory Special Agent and she's new to the Critical Incidence Response Group, who are based in Washington, DC. The particular case that they're focused on here is that of a serial killer who's preying on women, leaving their bodies in public parks holding flowers. The latter is notably reminiscent of the MO of the Cell Phone Killer, but that's Peter Romanos, who's in prison. Perhaps this is a copycat and perhaps Romanos is involved in some fashion, even if he isn't the killer.

Enter Sam Monroe, a prison psychologist, who clearly likes Grace and serves as a consultant on the case, not least because he's the son of Peter Romanos, the one who called the authorities on him when he realised the truth about his dad. That's when he went into psychology because he has an abiding need to understand why people do the things that they do. I totally understand that post-discovery questioning, because I've gone through it after a friend in the steampunk community in town was arrested for double homicide. Over the seven years it's taken to get to trial, we've asked ourselves and each other many questions, not least how we failed to see this aspect to our friend.

Needless to say, Grace and Sam hit it off and they start to think about whether they should begin a relationship, especially given that Sam is a divorced father with full custody of his daughter, whom he's raising with his ex-wife's mother. Families can be weird and I appreciate this unusual setup; it feels both real and something an AI would never write. However, every time they're about to drink coffee together, the case interrupts them, whether it's because of a new body, a new lead or even a new attack on Grace, because this particular killer has an obsession.

You see, like the Cell Phone Killer, this apparent copycat takes the mobile phones of his victims as possible trophies, but Grace realises at the scene of the third body that he isn't really doing that. He's taking them, but leaving them where he poses the bodies, carefully placed in the trees so he can watch the investigations through them remotely. She finds that cellphone and she speaks into its camera. In another firm departure from what an AI would write, the killer feels impelled to find out what she said and he risks much and often to force her into telling him, which, of course, she's increasingly unwilling to do. This is another unusual angle and it seriously ratchets up the tension.

A third unusual angle is a religious one which rarely shows up in this sort of novel, especially when applied to the sympathetic leads rather than the mad criminal. It's surely a requirement from the publisher, given that Revell was set up a hundred and some years ago to bring Christianity into our everyday lives through a variety of genres, but it's subtle and relatively unobtrusive. It's perfectly fine for two people to discover a shared religious connection along with their shared chemistry or shared outlook on life, even if they spend their days dealing with criminals. I didn't have a problem with any of the few mentions of religion that came up.

Well, except one. There's one scene that felt totally wrong to me and I wonder if it was forced on a generally sympathetic author by her publisher. When Grace and Sam finally manage to sit down in the same place at the same time, they discover that his daughter's there with her grandma, so, of course they all sit together and Grace must be introduced. Eleni is young and she asks a question a young girl might ask, about the people her dad works with and why they do what they do. Grace, in her very first encounter with Eleni, answers a work question with a Biblical response, which seems to me not just wildly out of character but a serious red flag.

But that's the only instance I found problematic; the few other references are appropriate and so ephemeral that they're just character texture. What matters more is the search for a serial killer, the methodology of the search and the romance that may yet spark if it's given a moment. Every one of these aspects works. The romance isn't overbearing and I sympathised firmly with both the participants. The methodology is as solid as the methodology in 'Fatal Code' wasn't. This feels like a real team doing real work, not a convenient TV show take on that. And the actual whodunit is a solid one, not particularly hard to figure out but not particularly easy to grasp in all its nuances.

And now I must go and eat something, as long as some serial killer doesn't attempt to kidnap me on my way to the kitchen. ~~ Hal C F Astell