ARC Review: Hacked by Ethan Stone

Title: Hacked Up

Author: Ethan Stone

Publisher: Self-Published

Expected Publishing Date: February 6, 2017

Genre: Contemporary, Suspense/Thriller

Format: eBook

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Seattle is being plagued by a string of gruesome murders. For Detective Peter Tao, it’s a career-making case, but he’s struggling to find a lead. How is the killer choosing his victims? What is he trying to prove?

With a long list of suspects and nothing to connect them, Peter is more determined than ever to apprehend the murderer. Then Peter gets the one vital piece of evidence that ties everything together. Now he’ll have to look beyond the obvious to identify the killer before anyone else is murdered.

Solve the mystery in this fast-moving crime thriller by Ethan Stone.

Meet Seattle PD Detective Bae Peter Tao and the string of gruesome male castration stiffs. At first he obviously didn’t think a serial killer roaming Seattle at night, chopping off penises. Until the body count rapidly rose and hit too close to home and he had to race against time to catch the killer.

This is a fast-faced story with a reserved but quite likeable main character. Peter kept his homosexuality from his parents though his senior detective partner was aware of it. I liked the easy rapport he had with his partner; though I did think there’s too many snickering happened in and outside the job. While sometimes the lighthearted air help boosting up the pages, other time they just annoyed me no end.

Told from Peter’s POV, it gave voice to his musing; the dilemma, grief, and strain involved in solving the murders. I could do with less of “unlike shown in television and movies” expressions he loved to throw in while relating procedures, and more of him being more quick-thinking and not making wrong decisions. But in a way, this display of ordinary quality (of making mistakes) lent believable factor to the story; the development to the investigation that would blow the precinct in more ways than one.

That said, I didn’t particularly like the dramatic ending. Not only that I felt the cunning and willy villains made rookie-like mistake, Peter too was unusually careless. Having focusing more on the case (and less on the romantic side of the story) this rather throw me a bit.

As an intro to Ethan Stone‘s books – yes, this is the first time for me reading this author’s works – this is not a bad one though. I can see myself looking for more of his books to read.

Advanced copy of this book is kindly provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Purchase link:  Amazon US

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