The Kill
Allison Brennan
Ballantine Books, Mar 2006, $6.99
ISBN: 0345485238

Olivia "Livie" St. Martin tries to stop the man with the blue bird on his arm from abducting her older sister Melissa, but he just slaps the little girl away and throws Missy inside his black truck. As he drives off, Livie's parents hearing her screams race outside, but they are too late. Her mom hugs Olivia, but that was the last squeeze she ever received from her.

Over three decades later, Olivia is Director of Trace Evidence and Materials Analysis at the FBI lab in Virginia, when her former husband Dr. Greg van Burns informs her that the DNA of the man she testified abducted her sibling, Brian Harrison Hall, does not match a hair found on Missy's corpse. Hall is freed, while Livie is stunned, as the only thing that relieved her survival guilt was the conviction of her sibling's rapist-killer. Needing to learn the truth, she breaks office procedures by leaving the lab to do field work. Olivia quickly finds evidence that a serial killer is loose and has been for years; his last known victim in Seattle, where she teams up with workaholic Police Detective Zack Travis to stop a clever psychopath and to figure out who killed Missy.

THE KILL is a fast-paced character driven investigative tale starring a stunned heroine who knows the irony that her field of expertise exonerated Hall. The romance between Livie and Zack seems somewhat forced, as the investigation takes front and center, as the crime lab guru and the homicide detective follow clues that take several intriguing twists. Fans of police procedurals with an overwrought obsessed star will want to read Allison Brennan's fine thriller and seek her two previous FBI tales (See THE PREY and THE HUNT).