One Perfect Grave

What a great book!  This tight, psychological thriller kept me on the edge of my seat.  One Perfect Grave begins when the remains of two bodies are found in an open grave along a highway in Stillwater, Minnesota.  FBI Special Agent Nikki Hunt knows exactly who they are.  The bright blue jacket lying on the frozen ground belongs to Kellan Rhodes, the missing boy that she has been desperately trying to find for the last two days.  The other body is his mother Dana, who had been Nikki's main suspect.  Dana had lost custody of Kellan several years earlier due to her drug use.  Although the wounds on Dana's body suggest that she murdered her son and then committed suicide, Nikki finds evidence that suggests Dana was a victim too.  Dana was trying to regain custody of Kellan and Nikki finds boot prints at the scene that belong to someone else. When another child is reported missing, local journalist Caitlin Newport claims that the cases are linked.  Zach Reeves was taken away from his own mother in a custody battle, just as Kellan was.

This is the second book in the Nikki Hunt series, following last year's The Girls in the Snow.  I knew it would be a great read because The Girls was fabulous.  I was not disappointed.  The suspense began on the first page and continued until the ending which surprised me somewhat.  I was not expecting the plot to go in the direction that it did.  The setting is Minnesota during the winter.  This is the same setting as The Girls in the Snow and I wonder whether winter will be a theme in all of the books in the series.  The author grew up in Minnesota and is well familiar with its weather patterns.  Finding a dead body frozen in the snow is not unusual for Minnesota.  

The pace was fast but not as fast as The Girls in the Snow.  The Girls was more of a thriller than One Perfect Grave because of the pacing.  However, this one was just as good.  The clues and twists kept me guessing who the killer might be throughout my reading of the book. The Nikki character is a strong woman.  She shares custody of her daughter with her ex-husband, just as the mothers of the two missing/dead boys did.  This link to Nikki's private life was strong enough to make me think that perhaps her own daughter would go missing also  (she didn't). It certainly gave her the impetus to solve the crimes quickly. 

Highly recommended.  5 out of 5 stars!