The 9th Girl. Finished 4-25-16, 4/5 stars, mystery, pub. 2013

Unabridged audio read by David Colacci. 13 hours, 20 minutes

#4 in the Kovac & Liska series

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.

from Goodreads

I rarely read a series out-of-order and almost never jump in at #4 but I’d heard positive things about this one and I needed something fast and easy to listen to during the 24 Hour Readathon.  It did not disappoint. That being said, I don’t know that I care enough about the two detectives, Kovac and Liska, to continue on with the series, but I did really enjoy this as a standalone.

The case of the Zombie Doe leads the police to a local high school, the very one that Liska’s son attends.  The detectives, the Mean Girls, and the serial killer lead the reader on a very satisfying chase.  I enjoyed, and subsequently hated, the cruelty of high school.  I know it’s changed a lot in the almost 26 years since I’ve been there, but still, I have to hope things aren’t this bad everywhere.

The two detectives are compelling and it was easy to catch up on their backstory without having read the other books of the series.  The twists and turns made this one a fun audio.

I checked it out of the library.