Girls Like Us
The instant New York Times bestseller, for the first time in mass market: Worlds collide when an FBI agent investigates a string of grisly murders on Long Island and faces the impossible question: What happens when the primary suspect is your father? FBI agent Nell Flynn hasn't been home in ten years. Nell and her father, Homicide Detective Martin Flynn, have never had much of a relationship. And Suffolk County will always be awash in memories of her mother, Marisol, who was murdered when Nell was just seven. When Martin dies in a motorcycle accident, Nell returns to the house where she grew up so that she can spread her father's ashes and close his estate. At the behest of her father's partner, Detective Lee Davis, Nell becomes involved in an investigation into the murders of two young women in Suffolk County. The further Nell digs, the more likely it seems to her that her father should be the primse suspect--and that his friends on the police force are covering his tracks. Plagued by doubts about her mother's murder, and her own role in exonerating her father in that case, Nell can't help but ask questions about who killed the two women and why. But she may not like the answers she finds--not just about those she loves, but about herself.
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This book took me about 24 hours to read start to finish and did not disappoint. The way I got to solve the case while she was going through the motions. Didn’t expect tit to end the way it did.
Christina Alger, author of The Banker's Wife, follows up that bestseller with an exhilarating thriller featuring a strong female protagonist in an untenable predicament.
In Girls Like Us, Nell, an FBI agent on leave following a work-related injury, has reached a crossroads in her life. She has never been confident that the right man was brought to justice for her mother's murder, even though she provided an alibi for her father. He has supposedly died in a motorcycle accident, but the more questions Nell asks, the more she finds the circumstances suspicious.
Alger's thriller never compromises its authenticity and credulity. At the outset, Nell is comforted by her father's fellow detective and best friend, Glenn Dorsey. But his last partner, Lee Davis, one of Nell's classmates, asks her to serve as a consultant as he investigates two grisly murders of young women that no one seems to care much about. Both women were poor, undocumented Latinas and became sex workers in order to survive. Nell is put off when Dorsey and other members of the force seem convinced that they know the killer's identity, even though crucial pieces of evidence simply don't fit.
Nell -- determined and relentless in her commitment to the investigation -- discovers evidence that is at odds with the father she knew, an alcoholic with a temper who lived modestly on a detective's salary, by a strict code of honor. Nell's first-person narrative is extremely effective in not only revealing her inner struggle, but propelling the story forward at an unrelenting pace. His usually tidy house is a mess, his bills unpaid. Details about her father's estate and recent activities are shocking. Unable to reconcile her findings, Nell fears that not only could her father have been a serial killer . . . but he may have murdered her own mother.
Alger cleverly makes several characters suspects not just in the murder investigation, but the underlying web of relationships and interests that motivated them. She expertly injects surprising plot twists and red herrings to keep readers interested. Nell is a sympathetic character -- a loner who has enjoyed career success solely on her own merits and has convinced herself that she can work through her emotions without assistance or support. She has been running from her emotions for a decade. Most importantly, she is a committed agent who is repulsed by the indifference shown by the local police to the murder victims and their families, relentless in her drive to find their killer.
Girls Like Us is an intricately constructed, eerily timely story about a tenacious young woman who refuses to permit the murders of two young women, in which she glimpses aspects of herself, remain unsolved. It is a story about lost chances -- not just for the murder victims, but for Nell and her father, as well. Alger proves again that she is capable of creating an engrossing, fast-paced thriller with emotional depth. Girls Like Us is one of 2019's must-read thrillers.
Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book.
In Girls Like Us, Nell, an FBI agent on leave following a work-related injury, has reached a crossroads in her life. She has never been confident that the right man was brought to justice for her mother's murder, even though she provided an alibi for her father. He has supposedly died in a motorcycle accident, but the more questions Nell asks, the more she finds the circumstances suspicious.
Alger's thriller never compromises its authenticity and credulity. At the outset, Nell is comforted by her father's fellow detective and best friend, Glenn Dorsey. But his last partner, Lee Davis, one of Nell's classmates, asks her to serve as a consultant as he investigates two grisly murders of young women that no one seems to care much about. Both women were poor, undocumented Latinas and became sex workers in order to survive. Nell is put off when Dorsey and other members of the force seem convinced that they know the killer's identity, even though crucial pieces of evidence simply don't fit.
Nell -- determined and relentless in her commitment to the investigation -- discovers evidence that is at odds with the father she knew, an alcoholic with a temper who lived modestly on a detective's salary, by a strict code of honor. Nell's first-person narrative is extremely effective in not only revealing her inner struggle, but propelling the story forward at an unrelenting pace. His usually tidy house is a mess, his bills unpaid. Details about her father's estate and recent activities are shocking. Unable to reconcile her findings, Nell fears that not only could her father have been a serial killer . . . but he may have murdered her own mother.
Alger cleverly makes several characters suspects not just in the murder investigation, but the underlying web of relationships and interests that motivated them. She expertly injects surprising plot twists and red herrings to keep readers interested. Nell is a sympathetic character -- a loner who has enjoyed career success solely on her own merits and has convinced herself that she can work through her emotions without assistance or support. She has been running from her emotions for a decade. Most importantly, she is a committed agent who is repulsed by the indifference shown by the local police to the murder victims and their families, relentless in her drive to find their killer.
Girls Like Us is an intricately constructed, eerily timely story about a tenacious young woman who refuses to permit the murders of two young women, in which she glimpses aspects of herself, remain unsolved. It is a story about lost chances -- not just for the murder victims, but for Nell and her father, as well. Alger proves again that she is capable of creating an engrossing, fast-paced thriller with emotional depth. Girls Like Us is one of 2019's must-read thrillers.
Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book.
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