17. Blood Ties - Nicholas Guild

Audio read by Graham Rowatt (VERY nicely)
CD in my new car
(11:19) 10 unabridged cds
2015, Forge Books
320 pgs.
Adult murder mystery
Finished 3-10-16
Goodreads rating: 3.99
My rating: 4
Setting: Contemporary San Francisco, CA and vicinity as well as various other places in different parts of the country

First line/s:"The rain had stopped just before dawn, but up on the coast highway the air was still laden with heavy mist, enough to dissolve the flashers on the police cruisers into pulses of smeary read light."

My comments:

(For some reason I've been reluctant to give fives lately. This was very, very good....but not quite a five, and I'm not even sure why.) How do mystery writers keep coming up with so many really different scenarios? Because there's so much going on in the real world that boggles the mind? Hmmmm. This story has a really interesting premise, and it follows it through to the end, nailing it. It started out a little slowly, but it didn't take long for me to be thinking up any excuse I could to get into the car and listen a little more. Psychopaths. Mental disorders. If you read too many of these sort of books you start looking at everyone with a questioning eye....

Goodreads synopsis:  Homicide detective Ellen Ridley of the SFPD is tracking a serial killer terrorizing young women in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ridley is sure she's cornered her most likely suspect: Stephen Tregear, a hacker and code breaker who works for U.S. Naval Intelligence. But Tregear is not the killer... he's the killer's son.
          Ridley and Tregear team up to look for Tregear's father, Walter, in an elaborate game of murderous cat and mouse. As the body count rises, Ridley must race against the clock to stop Walter before he kills any more women--and Tregear must finally confront the father who has been trying to kill him for twenty years. Blood Ties is an elegant and frightening thriller from Nicholas Guild.