Blown Away

"Shane Gericke writes with the clear eye of hard-nosed reporter and the sweet soul of an artist. The power of Blown Away is visceral and unforgettable - you won't want to miss this one." - Gayle Lynds. Shane Gericke's debut novel, Blown Away, became an immediate national bestseller that won the coveted Best First Mystery award from RT Book Reviews. Its central character is Emily Thompson, a rookie police officer in the leafy Chicago suburb of Naperville. Emily, who's finally pulled herself out of the emotional mud that's suffocated her since the unexplained deaths of her husband, mother, and father, is finally looking forward to a celebration of life: her upcoming fortieth birthday. Unfortunately, so is a serial killer, who terrorizes her city of 150,000 with a series of brutal murders staged to look like the childhood board games Emily played growing up on Chicago's Southwest Side. The killer is clearly someone from her past. But who? From "Time Bomb" and "Duck-Duck-Goose" to "Chutes and Ladders" and "Operation," every corpse brings Emily and her Naperville Police colleagues - Martin Benedetti, Annabelle Bates, Hercules Branch, and Police Chief Kendall Cross - one step closer to "Hangman," the ultimate game in this blood-drenched contest. The killer promises to make Emily play for real: Hanging by the neck till she's dead, dead, dead, to fulfill his psychopathic need to murder her. But, Emily and her pals have far different plans for him and her birthday celebration . . .