Review: Her Final Words (Emily Slate #4) by Alex Sigmore

                                                         

Print Length: 260 pages

Publisher: Eric Warren Author, LLC (September 18, 2022) 

From Goodreads.com:  Special Agent Emily Slate has seen her fair share of death ever since joining the FBI. But never anything like this… Emily’s most recent case brings her to a sleepy New York town to investigate the gruesome death of a fellow FBI agent. Except when she arrives, Emily discovers this was no home invasion gone wrong. This was a calculated kill, undertaken by a disturbed and brutal individual. 

As Emily begins her investigation, the trail leads to a local author, who the killer is using as inspiration for his kills; copying details from the author’s books as templates on how to kill his victims. As the bodies pile up and the danger grows ever closer, Emily begins to suspect the author herself may be the killer’s ultimate target. But just as Emily thinks she has a handle on things, her own husband’s killer surfaces with a warning for Emily. One that will turn everything she knows upside down…

They say the pen is mightier than the sword.

But the blade is far sharper than the pen...

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My Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Finally. Finally I feel like this author is showing off their true potential. 

Those of you who follow my reviews know that I have been struggling to get through this series for awhile now. In the prior books I would get a glimpse here and there of what I thought was a good story, but something about it would just either fall flat, or be so implausible that it was laughable. This one however, had everything I was looking for; suspicious characters, grisly murders with victims that at first glance don't seem to have anything in common, and one heck of a twist at the end. 

I thought it was clever to have the murders staged after murders that took place in a popular book series, bringing the focus immediately on the author as a potential victim, thereby wasting valuable time exploring that avenue of investigation which kept the police from realizing until the third murder, what the connection was between the victims (although they still never explained how one was given enough advanced warning to hide their child). 

As usual, I enjoyed the banter between Zara and Emily. You can tell with each book how perfectly they tend to balance each other out bouncing ideas off of each other and occasionally giving the other the kick in the pants they need. And I enjoy how Zara was there to keep Emily grounded when she received some concerning information about her husband potentially having a secret life. That was the first twist in this story. And it makes me curious as to if what he told her was a lie, who was he really? And how did Emily not notice that she was being lied to when she's supposed to be some hot shot detective? Is it a case of only seeing what she wanted to see? Or did she feel nothing off because he gave her no reason to think anything was amiss? I'm also curious as to how if the FBI does deep background checks on its members families, how they missed the fact that everyone about Matt was a lie. 

The second, and more powerful twist comes at the end of the book when we find out that much like her deceased husband, not everyone is who they claim to be. And while I find it a little odd that Emily didn't push those people for more information (at the very least did they have any reason to suspect her husband wasn't who he said he was). I am insanely curious to see how this new development is going to play out in the future.