The Book Diva's Reads

3.5 star read

The 9th Girl by Tami Hoag is the fourth book in the Kovac and Liska series and it starts off with a bang. It's New Year's Eve and a limo driver is escorting a group of young men and women around town. The party in the back of the limo is getting a little wild and frisky and the driver is more interested in the happenings in the back of the limo until a car hits a pothole and a body pops up out of the trunk falling into the street in front of the limo. Detectives Sam "Kojak" Kovac and Nikki "Tinks" Liska are called to the gruesome scene. Is this young lady a victim of the serial killer they've been tracking or something far worse?

Over the course of a week, detectives Kovac, Liska and their team must try to identify someone without a face and very few remaining teeth. Their only hope is a small tattoo on the girl's back. Since this body was so publicly revealed and has been sensationalized, it makes their case just a little harder rather than easier. The only recourse is to track missing persons that fit the profile and this leads a little too close to home for Nikki, as the girl may be a friend of her eldest son. If that wasn't bad enough, her son has been getting into fights, something completely unlike him, and he refuses to confide in her. Nikki's at her wits ends trying to unravel the mystery of her extremely quiet and introverted son and his problems and this case. To make matters worse it appears that the missing girl isn't liked by too many people at her school or by her parents, and the only person truly missing her is Nikki's son.

I found The 9th Girl to be a fascinating read into family dynamics, bullying, abuse and serial killers. Each book in this series provides slightly more insight into the personal lives of detectives Kovac and Liska. This book incorporated the use of social media and online journalism in an effort to discover the identity of the deceased. The incorporation of a pseudo anti-bullying campaign through the use of a tattoo promoting acceptance and the international anti-bullying campaign spearheaded by mixed martial artist Georges St. Pierre gave the story a nice little twist. The 9th Girl features truly bad guys (a serial killer), negligent and absentee parents, bullies, school cliques (featuring mean girls and male bullies), ignorant and ineffective school administrators, and more. If you enjoy a good multilayered mystery-suspense read, then you should definitely add The 9th Girl to your reading list.