Huntress Moon - Alexandra Sokoloff

   2014; 364 pages.  Book 1 (out of 6) in the series “The Huntress”.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Vigilante Justice; Crime-Mystery; FBI Thriller.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    It’s a terrible thing to watch one of your coworkers die.  Just ask FBI special agent Michael Roarke.  While on a stakeout, he witnessed a fellow agent Kevin Greer get run over by a full-sized truck as he stepped out into the street.

 

    Oh well, accidents happen when you’re in the FBI.  Agent Greer got careless while he was focused on the stakeout.  Hmm.  Or did he?

 

    Now that Roarke thinks about it, Greer started out into the street, then stopped and turned around to face a pedestrian on the sidewalk: a pretty female with blonde hair, dressed all in black, and wearing a turtleneck sweater.  Roarke thinks he recalls it looking like she said something to get Greer’s attention which caused him to pause.  In the street.  Which was a fatal mistake on his part.

 

    The woman disappeared after the collision.  Was she a factor in Greer’s death?  Is it even worth investigating?  It’ll most likely turn out to be a waste of time, but Roarke feels duty-bound to look into it.

 

    But without the blonde's name or a motive, how do you go about doing that?

 

What’s To Like...

      The FBI takes a dim view of any of its agents perishing in the line of duty, and an Investigative Team is quickly formed with Roarke heading it up.  Clues are frustratingly sparse to begin with.  It could be a revenge killing, although Greer’s service record is clean.  Or maybe it was a mob hit, since Greer had been working undercover, but would Organized Crime hire a hitman that’s a hitwoman?  Perhaps it was the work of a serial killer, but if so, where are the bodies of previous victims?  Maybe it was just an accident, and Roarke is reading too much into a chance encounter by Greer as he started to cross the street.

 

    It’s not really a spoiler to reveal that that last possibility is quickly ruled out.   This wasn’t an accident; it wouldn’t be much of a tale if it were, and the storyline in Huntress Moon follows the two main characters – Roarke and the perpetrator.  So this isn’t really a whodunit; it’s more of a “whydunit”, and a “what’s-the-killer-going-to-do-next” scenario.

 

    I liked the settings: Portland, Salt Lake City, and several stops along the California west coast, culminating with a visit to Blythe, California, a middle-of-nowhere city, at least when I used to pass through it in my college days.  The title references a rare alternate name for the astronomical phenomenon called a “Blue Moon”.

 

    I thought the storytelling was great.  We get to watch Roarke’s (and the rest of his team’s) deductive reasoning skills in action, squeezing the maximum of various hypotheses out of a minimum of hard evidence.  It was also fun to watch things unfold from the killer’s viewpoint as she carries out her carefully laid plans.  Nonetheless, Alexandra Sokoloff’s writing skills are sufficient to keep the reader (and the FBI) guessing as how the victims are, and were, selected and what motivates her to kill them.

 

    The ending is both surprising and exciting.  Hunter and huntress finally meet up, mutual respect is shown, and a bad situation is rectified.  All the plotlines are not tied up, but this is a rare case where that’s a plus, as I’m sure they will be further addressed in the next book in the series, Blood Moon.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.4/5 based on 8,300 ratings and 1,568 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.13/5 based on 7,422 ratings and 728 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Unsub (n.) : unidentified subject (cop slang).

Others: Mediagenic (adj.).

 

Excerpts...

    Sister Frances struck him as fair, if blunt.  She was also absolutely convinced of what she was saying.

    “This ‘brand of hate’ . . . was there anything political about it?”

    She frowned.  “A dash, I suppose.  He called himself an eco-anarchist.”

    Only in Portland, Roarke thought.  He raised an eyebrow and Sister Frances gave him the Cliff’s Notes version without his having to ask.  “Eco-anarchism, also known green anarchism, anarcho-primitivism, anarcho-naturism, anti-civilization anarchism . . . I could go on.”  (loc. 2016)

 

    He held up a hand between them, and forced his voice steady.  “Estancia aqui.  Te escondes.” Stay here.  Stay hidden.  He had no idea what would go down before he could get this girl to any kind of safety, but she didn’t look like she was about to move anywhere anytime soon, and for the moment, that was a good thing.

    And then, because he had to know, he asked, “¿Qué paso?”  What happened?

    She looked out at the body of her attacker with huge, dark eyes.  “Santa Muerte,” she whispered.  (loc. 4618, and it took me forever to figure out how to make that upside-down question mark.)

 

Kindle Details…

    Huntress Moon sells for $4.99 at Amazon.  The other five books in the series will run you either $3.99 or $4.99, mostly the latter.  Alexandra Sokoloff offers several other e-books at Amazon, in the $2.99-$4.99 range, and mostly Thrillers.  She also has authored three non-fiction books featuring tips about Screenwriting, which also go for $2.99-$4.99.

 

“A Bat’s got to do what a Bat’s got to do.”  (loc. 3416)

    The quibbles are minor.  I counted only 14 cusswords in the first 25% of Huntress Moon, although five of those were f-bombs.

 

    I spotted only a couple of typos: Later/later; Milvia/Marias; mantle/mantel, but overall, I’d say whoever did the editing did a good job.

 

    Be aware that, as with almost any law enforcement agency story, acronyms abound.  Some I knew, some I didn’t.  Some were explained; some weren’t.  Here’s a partial list of them: VICAP, BAU, MP report, CHP, DIY, COBOL, CI, BOLO, BFD, OPPLA, MILF.  Some of those are well-known, others were quite esoteric to me.

 

    But enough of the quibbling.  It’s always a joy to come across an author who knows how to write a page-turning thriller, and that was the case here.  The pacing was brisk, the “police procedural” portions were convincing, and I appreciated the inclusion of a couple of red herrings to keep me, and the FBI, on our toes.

 

    9 Stars.  When Roarke and his team were examining the “serial killer” angle, a femme fatale named Aileen Wuornos is mentioned.  I had never heard of her, but it turns out she was real and one of a very small group of American female serial killers.  Wikipedia has a page devoted to her; it is quite enlightening, and the link is here.