Dead End (Kaely Quinn Profiler, #3)

by Nancy Mehl

When a body is discovered in a field in Iowa, the police uncover fourteen additional corpses ranging from 20 years old to recent. The remains point to a serial killer with an MO the authorities have seen before--Ed Oliphant, a man who has been in prison for over 20 years . . . and is Special Agent Kaely Quinn's father. After several failed interview attempts to discover if Ed has been training someone to be a copycat killer, the police turn to Kaely in St. Louis.

Kaely promised herself she would never step foot in her hometown or set eyes on her father again. She's always refused to confront her past, but if she wants to prevent any more deaths, she must come face-to-face with the man she's hated for years.
As more bodies are discovered, Kaely races against time and her own personal turmoil to uncover the killer. Will this most personal case yet cost Kaely her identity and perhaps even her life?

• ISBN13: 9780764231865
• Publish Date: 19 May 2020 (first published 31 March 2020)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Imprint: Bethany House Publishers, a division of Baker Publishing Group
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 320
• Language: English

Reviews

[readingwithwrin]

Dead End is the final book in the Kaely Quinn Profiler trilogy.

This book deals with Kaely having to deal with her father in order to stop a new copy cat killer that is using his method. This brings up a lot of unresolved feelings that she's had since his arrest, while also dealing with the coping mechanisms she's made in order to be a good profiler.

Overall this book was going to be 4 stars, right up until the last little bit, but we'll get to that later on. Kaely and Noah have been assigned to figure out why a copy cat killer is now in her hometown and using her dad's old MO to kill people. This is a really rough case for Kaely in multiple different ways, but mostly because it means she will have to deal with and see her dad for the first time since he was arrested. This brings up all the old feelings as well as her trying to figure out why and how he could live this double life for so long. The lead up to what was going on, and how it was all happening was very well done and I could not figure out for the life of me who the new copy cat was. I really liked this part of the story and how you knew it had to be someone close, but it was impossible to figure out who it was due to how focused Kaely was on her dad and who he could have potentially talked to since he supposedly had very little contact with anyone. Noah did a good job in this one as well with trying to take off as much pressure as possible from Kaely in order to allow her to deal with what was going on emotionally and made it possible for her to be able to work the case as best as possible. Still, some shady things were surrounding them brought in, and I still don't get why she was allowed to work on a case that was so close to her.

Now onto the part that I really did not like and made me take a whole star away from the book. That was Kaely and her work partner Noah now rushing towards an engagement. They've never been on a real date before, really acknowledged that they like each other in a romantic way (even though the tension could be felt), but yes Noah let's go ahead and propose a marriage... like really that's how you're going to end the trilogy is with them now suddenly being okay and dealing with there pasts enough to propose marriage. Why must all Christian fiction mysteries that deal with law enforcement recently end in this way?. I really don't get it and I'm over this trope.