Cold Steele (The Jasmine Steele Mystery Series Book 4)

Description

In the fourth installment of Kimberly Amato’s chilling hard-boiled mystery series, detective Jasmine Steele is back—and shockingly, to herself most of all—she’s as happy as she’s ever been.

She and her brilliant psychologist partner Frankie are planning a wedding that’s been years in the making, and she’s settled into a new chapter of life with her nephew-turned-adopted son, Chase. But the good life turns out to be more fleeting than the detective’s caffeine withdrawals.

Jasmine, or Jazz, to her friends, gets a rude awakening when a 3-year-old cold case comes back hot. New York City’s “Carnation Killer,” a serial rapist and murderer, leaves his fifth calling card on a woman named Emilia Smith. The calling card? A heart-shaped carving into the woman’s chest and a single white carnation.

On the creep spectrum, Jazz puts this killer somewhere between Jack the Ripper and the Zodiac Killer. And her veteran right hand man is on medical leave.

She’s joined instead by temporary partner Detective Sydney Locke, a welcome new character. Sydney’s pretty green but has a fiery determination and talent for the beat that Jazz recognizes within minutes. Soon enough, they’ve got a mentor/protégé thing going—which certainly comes in handy at their often patriarchal workplace.

And it turns out Jazz and Syd will need that and more when the military gets involved with the investigation—because the victim is none other than the daughter of a high-ranking official, and the brass knows more than they’re saying.

What the team do know is that Emilia’s last night alive was spent at a college bar that sparks Jasmine’s least happy memory—the very same establishment that served as a backdrop to her own early adult years, a past defiled and traumatized by a dangerous man. Just as Jazz is finally ready to be happy, her bone-chilling trauma comes rushing back. And the Carnation Killer is still out there.