Isabella Maldonado

Isabella Maldonado has become one of my favorite writers of crime- thriller- action packed everything. In this second installment of the Daniela Vega series, Maldonado has tasked her code breaking heroine with a personal as well as public battle. It is a killer of a story, literally and figuratively. Vega assesses the situations, makes her choices, and is prepared to live or die with the consequences .

Whip smart, physically able, tactically aware I can’t help thinking that there is an awful lot of Ms. Maldonado in her heroine. While there is a lot of action, there is a equal amount of cerebral gymnastics and a plot that keeps coming at you from so many angles. As in the author’s other series, this story is tightly crafted, never flinching and almost impossible to set aside until the last page is turned. Few writers do this genre better than Isabella Maldonado.

So many thanks to Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley for a copy.… (mais)

FBI Agent Dani Vega is on administrative leave pending the results of an investigation into her previous case when she gets a call from the doctors at Bellevue: her mother is showing signs of lucidity. Catatonic since the gruesome murder of her husband and Dani's father when Dani was seventeen, she is believed to be the one who killed him. Dani walked in on the murder and was instrumental in the case that led to her mother's incarceration.

When her mother says that she didn't murder her husband, Dani decides to look into the case again. She goes to the NYC Police Detective who investigated. He agrees to give her the files on her father's case if she will look at some of his open cases to see if he has a serial killer. Dani is a former Army Ranger who was trained to analyze patterns. She determines, rather quickly, that not only are the cases related, but that they are only part of a long string of murders all perpetrated by the same serial killer.

This discovery leads to the formation of a task force between the FBI and the various police forces of the places in NYC where the killer has operated. The investigation is tense and uses lots of new tools to link the 31 murders. But the killer has caught wind of the investigation and doesn't want Dani and the task force to succeed in stopping him.

This was an excellent and fast-paced thriller. Depending on how you feel about characters who are ultra-competent, the characters are interesting. Dani, herself, is a former Army Ranger with well-honed physical skills and with an almost preternatural ability to solve puzzles. But she is also a grieving daughter who lost her father to murder and was taken in by an aunt who was emotionally abusive to her because of her resemblance to her mother whom the aunt feels stole her baby brother from her. She feels guilt that her eyewitness testimony resulted in her mother's commitment to Bellevue.

I enjoyed this story and couldn't put it down until I reached the conclusion.… (mais)

The Falcon is the third in the series featuring Nina Guerrera, a dedicated FBI agent and trauma survivor. Nina and her team track a serial killer snatching girls from the Arizona Institute of Technology in Phoenix, AZ. It so happens that Bianca, a teen Nina rescued from the streets five years ago, is scheduled to attend AIT in the fall—which creates an obvious plot scenario—but this doesn’t spoil anything. Nina’s team, Agents Wade, Kent, and Breck, join Detective Perez in the hunt, which leads them in many unexpected directions. The demented killer (or unsub as they call him) is intelligent and lethal to the end. I enjoyed the constant profiling from Kent and Wade as they stalk their stalker, and there’s a lot of cybercrime in this one for Agent Breck to tackle. As always, Nina’s courage and determination shines through. This book is edge-of-your-seat entertainment.… (mais)

A bomb threat at the New York County Supreme Court changes meeting plans for FBI Special Agent Daniela "Dani" Vega and her supervisor, SAC Steve Wu of the New York Counterterrorism Division. Hours later, she’ll be undercover as Nicola "Nikki" Corazón with recently captured assassin Gustavo Toro. Wu will partner leadership with Detective First Grade Mark Flint with the NYPD Major Case Squad, guiding the team from the Joint Operations Center at 26 Fed. A former Army Ranger, Dani will be using all her military and law enforcement training if she is to save herself and Gustavo from the unexpected twists and turns of the undercover assignment.

From the moment Dani received the phone call from her supervisor changing the intended morning meeting schedule, the action and suspense never stop. Political implications, conspiracy, revenge, and multiple assassins are behind the intensity of the case's spider web. This time, justice may not prevail. The authenticity of the edge-of-your-seat suspense is compelling not only by the author’s writing style but validated in reading “About the Author."

In participating in the Kindle Summer Challenge, one challenge was reading a book by one of the featured Hispanic and Latino authors. I’m grateful for the Kindle Challenge as I don’t know that I would have independently discovered the author’s writing. If you read books on your #Kindle and have not yet participated, I encourage you to enjoy the challenge. Many of the titles offered on featured lists are available through Kindle Unlimited. Finding a must read author is the best motivation.

I’m looking forward to reading more of the series.… (mais)