39926632She’s chasing a killer. He’s watching her every move.

He hides in the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment. Each kill is calculated, planned and executed like clockwork.

Struggling to balance her personal and professional life, young DS Becca Vincent has landed the biggest case of her career—and she knows that it will make or break her. But she can’t catch the culprit alone. Together with facial recognition expert Joe Russell, she strives to get a lead on the elusive murderer, who is always one step ahead of them.

Time is not on their side. The body count is rising, and the attacks are striking closer and closer to home. Can Becca and Joe uncover the connection between the murders before the killer strikes the last name from his list?

Source Format Pages Publisher Genre Publication Date
Netgalley eARC 352 Thomas & Mercer Thriller November 8th, 2018

There is a lovely guarantee with John Marrs’ books –  fully fleshed characters and crazy twisted, complex plots! One does never have to worry about feeling disconnected from a character, or feeling bored, or stagnant with one of John’s titles.

Her Last Move is a complex story of multiple murders which start out with one that doesn’t necessarily look like a murder at first? But which is followed by very precise, different and gory murders quickly one after the other. The police force are bamboozled and working really hard to find a link in between all those killings. Becca Vincent is one of the DS’s that gets herself on the case to prove herself in a male-led workforce culture that, in her mind, still doesn’t believe that a woman ‘can do it’.

Becca is a great character! She’s brave and her heart is definitely in the right place with her ambitions as she works in the force, but she also demonstrates her failings as she struggles to balance her time in between work and loved ones. This little conflict adds an extra layer to the story and to her character.

This novel also introduces ‘super recognizers’- people who have the extraordinary face recognition ability and it is estimated that the population has about 1-2% of these super recognizers who can remember about 80% of the faces they’ve seen. Ever. It’s a proper superpower and it’s no miracle that law enforcement/intelligence may want to make use of that power, in real life. Her Last Move demonstrates this specific ability through a character named Joe.

Joe is wonderful <spoiler> and just when I thought a bit of a love story was thrown into the mix, guess again, Joe was not interested in the ladies! Made for a great, embarrassing scene though! </spoiler>.His relationship dynamics with Becca, as they have to work together, bounces off the page! As an intro to this post, I mentioned that John Marrs always delivers the fully fleshed characters- Joe is no exception to this. Aside from his work and what he needs to specifically do to assist in catching the killer, Joe is haunted by an event in his past. Being consumed by providing his services to the police and by his past, Joe’s own personal relationship also seems to be under pressure.

It’s this great and flowing balance in between more than one element in this thriller. It’s not just work-work-work to find the crazed murderer. It’s also the personal lives that make these characters and the whole book intriguing!

Speaking of intriguing- what about that murderer, hey?

Wellll… what a backstory! You know, how us thriller readers are just proper nosey?! We don’t just want to know what they do, we want to know WHY they do it and what they’re thinking! For most of the book, whilst Marrs was laying down Easter eggs for the reader to pick up on, I wasn’t at all sure what made this particular killer go off the rails in such epic proportions until it was spelled out for me, and all the pieces fell into place! Love it!

A bit crazy to even say it, I guess, but this book definitely didn’t follow the – ooh, this murder is the same as that murder so we know the same person is doing the killing. Yes, there were some connecting elements, but bliiii-meyyy, were the murders different… one more creative than the next! A mastermind at work… And I found it interesting that whilst no murder ever goes with an acceptable excuse, I could totally ‘get’ the why! Marrs took this character and this particular idea and used its full potential.

Overall, this was a typically exciting thriller by John Marrs. I expected nothing other than quality and guaranteed enjoyment!

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