Before He Kills Again

Detective Cassie Rowan, Book 1

By: Margaret Murphy

Narrated by: Bianca Amato

A serial predator is on the prowl in Liverpool—seven victims so far—and he’s already chosen his next one.

The police can’t catch him. He leaves no trace. No one has been able to provide a reliable description.

Detective Cassie Rowan goes undercover in a dangerous game of cat and mouse through the teeming backstreets of Liverpool. But how long will it be before he turns the tables and begins hunting her?

©2020 Margaret Murphy (P)2022 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Building suspense

The story starts rather slowly but gains momentum with the edge of your seat thriller expertise that puts Murphy up there with the best of storytellers.

Bianca Amato does a good job, occasionally losing her voice do a character isn’t clear but in all she’s very listenable.

Before she writes again...

This started out well, but just dragged on and on way too long and became increasingly annoying and hard to believe. The female police detective goes rogue and consistently disobeys orders from her superiors (because of course she is smarter than everyone else on the force). Her behavior belied credulity. There is no way she would still be employed in the police force in real life.

The insertion of the psychotherapist into the storyline was necessary I suppose due to the plethora of "mad" suspects on the case. The details of the therapist's personal life didn't seem necessary. Certainly, the reason for his wife's divorce filing (revealed after teasing it forever) seemed absolutely ridiculous, cold, and unfeeling. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. I'm sure the police detective and the therapist will be romantic partners by book 2, book 3 at the latest.

I suppose the author is laying the groundwork for a series with this book, but there seemed to be alot of filler that went nowhere. There is too much going on here and most of it was not good. All the shocking twists have been done before, all the suspects are the usual suspects, and unrealistic police actions and armchair psychology rule the day.