The Last Move by Mary Burton Published by Brilliance Audio, Montlake Romance on September 19, 2017
Genres: Romantic Suspense
Pages: 327
Format: Audiobook
ISBN: 1542046920
ASIN: B074PC769V
Goodreads
In this gripping stand-alone from bestselling author Mary Burton, an FBI agent must catch a copycat killer. The only difference this time: she’s the final victim.
Catching monsters helps FBI agent Kate Hayden keep her nightmares at bay. Now an urgent call brings her back to San Antonio, the scene of her violent past. A brutal new murder shows hallmarks of a serial killer nicknamed the Samaritan. Tricky part is, Kate already caught him.
Either Kate made a deadly error, or she’s got a copycat on her hands. Paired with homicide detective Theo Mazur, she quickly realizes this murder is more twisted than it first appeared. Then a second body is found, the mode of death identical to a different case that Kate thought she’d put behind her.
Now Kate and Detective Mazur aren’t just working a homicide; the investigative pair is facing a formidable enemy who knows Kate intimately. While Mazur is personally trying to protect Kate, the closer they are drawn to the killer, the clearer it becomes that in this terrifying game, there is only one rule: don’t believe everything you see…
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Even though The Last Move is filled with psychos of every description, I’m going to review it as romantic suspense for two reasons. First of all, that is what author Mary Burton calls it and it’s her book. Second, some of you may be concerned for my mental health since I spend so much time listening to the inner workings of the psychotic mind and I just want to take things down a notch. Unfortunately, this attempt at the warm and fuzzy doesn’t dilute the fact that The Last Move is loaded with some seriously warped characters. Even our heroine, FBI profiler Kate Hayden is a bit quirky and damaged, but that doesn’t keep her from being focused on tracking down killers.  When she returns to her hometown of San Antonio to investigate what seems to be a copycat killing based on the crimes of a man she knows is behind bars, she is forced to face not only the events of her past but her present fear of the attraction she feels for police detective Theo Mazur. How a man who is in prison can commit a crime is the suspense and Detective Theo is the romance. But, on to our cast of psychos — Psycho #1 is Kate’s high school boyfriend who murdered her father and shot her. Why? Because he’s a psycho and a particularly unlikable one. Psycho #2 is a serial killer who likes to leave weird notes at the crime scene which is why Kate is needed because her specialty is linguistic forensics. Psycho #3 loves to build boxes and put pretty girls in them for his pleasure. If the box is too small, he has ways of dealing with that. Psycho #4 likes to slice up his victims a bit. When he gets bored, he cuts their throats. What do these psychos have in common? Agent Kate Hayden has been involved in bringing each of them to justice. Now it appears one of them is back for revenge, but which one is it? Is it more than one of them or could it be none of them?
Narrator Teri Schnaubelt turns in her usual excellent performance. She manages to make each psycho sound individually creepy as well as making Theo’s daughter Alyssa sound like a typical teenager!
There is a lot of twistiness in The Last Move, so don’t let your mind wander or you’ll miss the door that leads to the correct psychopath. Mary Burton has certainly created an appealing duo who could star in an interesting series, but the book is a stand-alone, so if we never hear from Kate and Theo again, their connection successfully softens a story that is filled with some very nasty characters. Highly recommended for my fellow psycho lovers who like their creeps tempered with a little romance.
About Mary Burton
Mary Burton loves writing suspense, researching law enforcement and forensic procedures, morning walks, baking, books, and tiny dachshunds. She also enjoys hunting down serial killers, which she does in her and USA Today bestselling novels of suspense and romance. Library Journal has compared her work to that of Lisa Jackson and Lisa Gardner, and Fresh Fiction likened her writing to that of James Patterson.
Mary is routinely featured among the top twenty writers in Amazon’s Author Rankings for romantic suspense, and her recent novel The Last Move claimed the number ten fiction slot in the Kindle eBooks Store.
A Richmond native, Mary has lived there for most of her life. She is a graduate of Virginia’s Hollins University and worked in marketing before she began writing full time. Her first book was published in 2000 and she’s now the author of thirty-four published novels, five novellas and four works of contemporary women’s fiction written as Mary Ellen Taylor.
When not traveling for research or visiting with readers at bookstores, book festivals and conferences, Mary remains very much a homebody. She and her husband spend time alternately enjoying and lamenting their empty nest and spoiling their four-legged babies Buddy, Bella and Tiki.
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