Review: Cut and Run (Criminal Profiler #2) by Mary Burton

  

Print Length: 321 pages

Publisher: Montlake Romance (October 9, 2018)

From Goodreads.com:  Trauma victims are not new to medical examiner Faith McIntyre, but this one is different. The unconscious woman clinging to life after a hit and run is FBI agent Macy Crow. What the woman from Quantico was doing in a dark alley after midnight is just one mystery. The other is more unsettling: Macy is Faith’s mirror image—the twin sister she never knew she had.

Faith knew that she was adopted, but now she’s finding that her childhood concealed other secrets. Following the trail of clues Macy left behind, Faith and Texas Ranger Mitchell Hayden make a shocking discovery on an isolated country ranch—a burial ground for three women who disappeared thirty years before.

They weren’t the only victims in a killer’s twisted plot. And they won’t be the last.

As the missing pieces of Faith’s and Macy’s dark lives snap into place, Faith is becoming more terrified by what she sees—and by what she must do to save her sister and herself from the past.

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My Rating: 2 stars out of 5

To begin with, you don't have to have read book one in order to enjoy this one (from the looks of it each book focuses on a different person). In fact, without realizing it, I had actually read the last book in this series first and didn't even realize it until I prepared for this review. 

This story was ....... interesting. It had the potential to be a lot more than it was, which was disappointing, and I wish the focus on the two "lead" characters hadn't been so much on their relationship. Maybe I did miss something from the first book where these two are involved because to me, their relationship didn't make a whole lot of sense. One minute they are having meaningless sex with each other (because he's still grieving the loss of his wife who was one of Faith's friends), and all of the sudden they realize they are in love with each other? I still don't quite understand what prompted that sudden change of heart. I also didn't feel like their relationship (especially them sleeping together) added anything to the plot. 

I wish we could have spent more time with Macy. Don't get me wrong, I completely understand why the author choose to go the route they did, making things more complicated for the other players, but she seemed like such a strong and interesting character that it's a shame we didn't get to see more of that personality come out before she was taken out of action until the last few chapters. 

As for the rest of it? I enjoyed the decades old mystery of what happened to the missing girls and their babies and how that played out. I think the person behind things was a little far-fetched, especially their role in the events that happened in the past. While it was a surprising twist, I don't feel that it made a whole lot of sense. I also wish the "hired help" had been someone connected to the past as well instead of just someone hired to clean up the mess. I'm also still trying to figure out how Faith managed to get on the hit list when she didn't even know she had a twin, much less the sordid details of how she and her twin came to be. 

All in all, this wasn't a bad story and I do feel like it will appeal to those who enjoy good cold-case mysteries coupled with a bit of solid detective work (which reminds me, why was Faith as a medical examiner running around questioning people?). I would read more from this author in the future. 

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                                                                      Cut and Run  is available from Amazon.com

                                                                    (for free if your subscribe to Kindle Unlimited)