Review: The Copy Cat (Detective Anna James #3) by Emmy Ellis

                                                               

Print Length: 261 pages

Publisher: Joffe Books (August 20. 2024) 

From Goodreads.com:  Two young boys head to an old, abandoned warehouse to drink alcopops and hang out. When they barge the door open, a swarm of rats scurry towards the other side of the room.

The eldest of the two boys pans his phone torch over to where the rats had come from. Dark patches. Clothes. A suit. A green tie. A man.

The victim has been slashed with a knife and rats have eaten his face.

Detective Inspector Anna James is called in to investigate. ID in the victim’s pocket reveals he’s Martin Lowe, a wealthy financial advisor who’s married to a famous supermodel.

Then Anna discovers guinea pig fur was sent to Martin’s wife, along with a note containing a cryptic WHERE is the body in the HOUSE?

The guinea pig fur sparks a memory for Anna. When she was a child, six men went missing and guinea pig fur was sent to their wives, too. Their bodies were never found.

It looks like Anna and her team have a copycat killer on their hands. And if that’s the case, things are about to get a lot worse . . .

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My Rating: 3 stars out of 5

After how much I disliked the first two books in this series, I swore I was done. However, I did not realize that I also had the third book already on my kindle and I dislike making things as not finished without giving them a chance, so I reluctantly opened this one expecting to hate it as much as the others. 

HOWEVER. I actually ended up enjoying this one a lot more than the others. 

Yes, we still knew who the killer was from the get go, but I felt like this one had more of an in-depth dive into the why. The glimpses in the past to when our killer was a boy of ten being taught and molded by his serial killer father gave insight to how the killer ended up becoming what he was in the future (and allowed the reader to understand the twisted way that he was choosing his victims). I also found it interesting that he continued to receive "guidance" from his father (in the form of hearing his father's voice in his head), this made him one of the more interesting killers I've seen in this series. 

Moving on to Anna and her team, I feel like this story wrapped up a few loose ends nicely while making Anna herself become more intriguing as she has begun to realize that not only is the world NOT black and white, but it is okay (within reason) to walk in that gray area. I liked how her feelings for "Parole" showed her human side, and how she admitted that she wished things between them could be different. And I must admit, I'm curious now with the shake up to her team, how things will move forward. 

All things considered, despite the rocky start to this series, I feel like the author is finally hitting their stride, and I will at least read one more before I decide whether to continue on or not. 

DISCLAIMER: I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher. This has not affected my review in any way. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are 100% my own.