No Mercy

I recently read a positive review of Joanna Schaffhausen's new book No Mercy (#888).  It's a follow-up to The Vanishing Season, which featured the same main characters, Ellery Hathaway, a female police officer, and Reed Markham, an FBI agent who had rescued Ellery from a serial killer who preyed on young girls.  Although you can read No Mercy without having read the first book, I did often feel like I had just been dropped in the middle of a story I would have understood better if I had all the requisite background.  This gritty sequel still manages to pack a number of punches.

Ellery is off the job as a police officer following the events of The Vanishing Point, attending mandatory group therapy sessions for survivors of violent crime.  She still hasn't come to terms with what has happened to her, so she copes by investigating the backgrounds of her fellow victims.  Investigating isn't enough when Wendy Mendoza begs her help to find the rapist who has torn apart her life, nor for the middle-aged arson victim who lost her toddler son in a furniture store fire a quarter of a century before.  Ellery soon realizes she needs help in running down clues and background so she calls in a favor from Reed Markham, who has stepped in before to aid her.  It's clear that the pair are rattling the right cages when Ellery and Reed are both warned to stop digging into the crimes.

I particularly liked the Boston setting of this book.  It was easy to visualize the neighborhoods and the characters Ellery and Reed come across.  I will have to go back and read The Vanishing Point, though.  Ms. Schaffhausen dropped a big reveal at the end of No Mercy which makes it clear that another book about these two will be coming in the future.  I'd like to be prepared when it does.