Detective Lt. Anna Koray is a good person and a good cop. She works hard at her job at the Bayern County Sheriff's Department, and truly, she just wants to help people. But she just killed a guy (in the line of duty) and she kind of liked it. What's up with that?
A visit to her old shrink, Dr. Richardson, doesn't really help much, but it does explain things a bit more. Anna Koray used to be Elena Theron when she was a little girl and the daughter of a prolific serial killer named Stephen Theron AKA The Forest Strangler. Elena and her dad were two peas in a pod and both loved spending as much time in the forest as possible. Turns out dear old dad was doing other things in the forest, though, besides foraging for nuts and admiring the lush scenery.
Dr. Richardson used an experimental technique on young Elena to lock her memories of her past away in a "memory vault" so she could move on in her life with new adoptive parents, and it worked! Except memories have been leaking through as of late and she has started to remember her history, which is dark to say the least.
Even more troubling is the fact that bodies have started to turn up and they are eerily similar to The Forest Strangler's work; pretty blondes laid out in wooded areas, decorated with flowers and things from the forest in an almost sacrificial manner. When retired FBI agent Aaron Parkes is called in to assist with this new crop of murders, things could get really dicey for Anna, as she and Parkes spent quite a bit of time together when she was a child and he was hunting and capturing her father. Will he remember her and blow up her life?
The better question is why can't she help herself from joining this most recent investigation? She knows it's a conflict of interest, but a small part of her wonders if her father could still be alive and committing these crimes. When a YouTuber named Cas Russo inserts himself into things by taking footage of the first murder victim prior to police arriving, he puts a target on his own back as a potential murder suspect, but he also seems to know a bit too much about Anna and she needs to find out exactly what he knows.
To complicate matters, her ex-boyfriend, Dr. Nick Kohler is back in her life, mainly because she almost died in that shootout where she gained the upper hand. Although she misses Nick's companionship, does she really know him as well as she thinks? Anna's got a lot to figure out and she needs to do it quickly because the walls are rapidly closing in on her and she might not make it out alive.
First off, let me say that The Hunter's Daughter gave me a thrill reading it that reminded me of the golden days of thrillers in the early 2000's. I felt like I was reading a James Patterson, Lisa Gardner, Tess Gerritsen or Patricia Cornwell novel from back in the day and I loved having that feeling.
If you enjoy a pulse-pounding thriller, you will love The Hunter's Daughter. It's been quite a while since a book has kept me guessing until almost the end and actually made me gasp at one particular reveal. While this is Nicola Solvinic's first book, it feels like something written by a well-seasoned author. I can't wait for a follow-up book and will definitely have my eye on Ms. Solvinic. Highly, highly recommended.
