Books Read: Katia Lief - Five Days to Die

Source - Received from publisher for review

Your time is up...

Emily Parker is missing, kidnapped from a car park in broad daylight and the police are clueless as to her whereabouts.

The only man her family can turn to for help is retired FBI profiler John Geary. But Geary suspects she's been taken by a serial killer who targets mothers. Every seven years he strikes, enacting a gruesome ritual. And Geary knows that there's much worse to come....

Emily has five days left. Five days of waiting. Five days of hell. Five days before the killer returns for her son...

On the last day of her summer vacation in Cape Cod, Emily decides to pop to the local store to re-stock her mother's cupboards before she and the kids return to New York.  However, this is one decision that she would seriously regret.

Whilst walking round the store she is unnerved by an encounter with a strange man so she hurries through the rest of the store in a rush to get back to her mother Sarah and her children, David, brSammie and Maxi.  But she never makes it home...

Husband Will gets a shocking call from his mother-in-law and rushes to the Cape to try and find out what has happened to Emily.  After he reports her missing Will re-traces her steps, frustrated by the lack of response from the local police force, where he meets retired FBI profiler John Geary at the last place Emily was known to have gone.  Together they find her car still in the shop's car park which reiterates his belief that she would not have disappeared of her own fruition.

But there's worse news to come for Will when John Geary realises that this disappearance has a familiar ring to it and that there is a serial killer at work.  Every seven years on 3rd September a mother disappears but then five days later her son disappears and is subsequently found dismembered.  Emily has two sons so the race is on to try and catch the killer before he has a chance to snatch either of Emily's sons. However, the killer is closer to home than they think...

My one minor gripe about the book is that in my opinion there were a few too many characters but this does not distract too much from the flow of the story.  This is the first book that I've read by Katia Lief and it certainly won't be my last.  Her next novel, Vanishing Girls, is due out in the summer and has already been added to my Amazon wishlist.