In chapter one of Valentina Giambanco's Blood and Bone, a woman is accosted in a parking lot at night by two men with nothing good in mind. Instead of being afraid, she gives them more than one warning to rethink their intentions and leave her alone, but like the knuckleheads who gang up on Lee Child's Jack Reacher, the men won't listen. Until the woman teaches them a painful lesson and introduces herself--to the attackers and readers new to the series--as Seattle PD homicide detective Alice Madison. It's a thrilling introduction.
Madison then catches a case involving a man savagely beaten to death in his own home. Clues indicate a possible link to a murder case from seven years earlier--one that was closed when the accused was convicted and imprisoned--and that may not be the only closed case connected to the new one. A serial killer may have gotten away with murder for years by always successfully framing someone else. Worse, the killer has no plans to stop.
Madison is an intriguing character who exudes strength without having to talk tough or behave like a man. Her complicated past and events from previous books are referred to but the details aren't hard to follow or distracting. Madison is no-nonsense, as is Giambanco's lean yet expressive prose: when Madison tells a friend about the murders, "Rachel did not jump in with a reassuring cliché. Madison thanked her for it in her heart." When the crimes are horrific, the understatement says more than enough. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd