The Dead and the Dying

In the first installment of Amy Cross's Joanna Mason thriller series, the Dead and the Dying, this thriller was told in four big parts by three POVs. Joanna Mason was a police detective for the NYPD, when this whole ball of yarn started to unravel on the 12th anniversary of the Sam Gazade serial murders--the same day he was to be executed. Joanna was one of his victims, the only who escaped him and was severely injured. Now she was dealing with her second round of breast cancer, something she haven't told her colleagues, when there was another rash of serial crimes that copycatted Gazade's murder with a twist. But she never encountered two twisted people, Dr. Alice Huston, a criminal mastermind and a psychology professor at the local university, and Paula Clarke, her student who should manipulated. It was up to Joanna to put the pieces together and stop her in the tracks.

This was an interesting thriller. I did feel bad for Paula for having a rough childhood. I didn't like Gazade and Alice Huston one bit. I did care about Joanna and her cancer diagnosis, and how she suffered the same fate twice. I also cared about Dawson as well. I liked the New York City area for the location for this novel's settings. There's some grisly and graphic scenes, when it dealt with the murders, that made it like a horror novel in a way.  Great drama, lots of real good non-stop action and suspense, and plenty of intrigue and mystery, too.

Check it out today!