Author: Tami Hoag
Publisher: Dutton
Publication Date: June 2013
Genre: Mystery / Suspense / Thriller
Buy The Book: Amazon | BN | Audible
Description: "Kovac had seen more dead bodies than he could count: Men, women, children; victims of shootings, stabbings, strangulations, beatings; fresh corpses and bodies that had been left for days in the trunks of cars in the dead of summer. But he had never seen anything quite like this . . . "
On a frigid New Year's Eve in Minneapolis a young woman's brutalized body falls from the trunk of a car into the path of oncoming traffic. Questions as to whether she was alive or dead when she hit the icy pavement result in her macabre nickname, Zombie Doe. Unidentified and unidentifiable, she is the ninth nameless female victim of the year, and homicide detectives Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska are charged with the task of not only finding out who Zombie Doe is, but who in her life hated her enough to destroy her. Was it personal, or could it just have been a crime of opportunity? Their greatest fear is that not only is she their ninth Jane Doe of the year, but that she may be the ninth victim of a vicious transient serial killer they have come to call Doc Holiday.
Crisscrossing America's heartland, Doc Holiday chooses his victims at random, snatching them in one city and leaving them in another, always on a holiday. If Zombie Doe is one of his, he has brought his gruesome game to a new and more terrifying level. But as Kovac and Liska begin to uncover the truth, they will find that the monsters in their ninth girl's life may have lived closer to home. And even as another young woman disappears, they have to ask the question: which is the greater evil--the devil you know or the devil you don't?
My Thoughts: The 9th Girl begins with murder when a young woman’s body falls from the trunk of a car on New Year’s Eve. Her murder is attributed to Doc Holiday, making her the ninth victim of this vicious and elusive predator. The press quickly nicknames her Zombie Doe because of questions as to whether she was still alive when she fell out of the trunk. I found that truly crass and heartless, but then I’m not a real fan of the media personally, and I find it unethical and abhorrent how they twist a story to sensationalize it for ratings, like they do in real life.
When she is identified as Penelope Gray, we also learn she was a classmate of Detective Liska’s son and that’s where it should hit home to people that this young girl’s life has been taken, along with the promise of what she could have been, what she could have done had she lived. Instead, we learn that Penelope, known as “Gray” to the people who knew her lived a troubled life. She was an unhappy person, struggling to find her place in a world that seemed to be against her. She didn’t have many friends and the people that got close enough, usually got pushed away. Suffice it to say there weren’t many people who mourned her passing.
As Kovac and Liska begin investigating, a lot of clues don’t add up to support the theory that Doc Holiday is responsible for this murder. In spite of the media’s rabid insistence that it is. One thing I enjoyed is this book gives us some first-person perspective and insight from Doc Holiday giving the reader the opportunity see how his mind works, particularly when he hears the media reports that a murder is being attributed to him. As the clues lead the reader to believe Gray’s murder was not the work of Doc Holiday, what will he do next?
I enjoy the partnership and friendship Kovac and Liska share. They work well together but I got a strong sense they are getting burnt out and this series will be coming to an end in the near future. Hopefully it ends because Kovac retires or Liska takes an assignment out of homicide so she can spend more time with her family. I really like these characters and don’t want to see anything bad happen to either one of them.
My Final Verdict: Overall, an intense nail-biter, edge-of-your-seat offering that continues the story of the serial killer introduced in The 1st Victim, but what is interesting is this book segues right into Cold Cold Heart, which is not part of the Kovac and Liska series. After reading this book, you should follow up with Cold Cold Heart to bring things full circle and get closure with Doc Holiday. This was another great thriller that I highly recommend to fans of thriller, suspense, mystery genres.
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