Detective Darren Corliss is hanging by a thread. In between recovering from a near-fatal wound and returning to work at a hostile precinct, he’s struggling to help care for his ailing brother. His partner and boyfriend, Detective Andreas Ruffner, wants to help, but doesn’t know how. And with his own family crises brewing, Andreas is spread almost as thin as Darren.
For cops, though, life takes a backseat to the job. When a stack of unsolved homicides drops into their laps, Andreas and Darren think they’re unrelated cold cases. But when a connection surfaces, they find themselves on the tail of a prolific serial killer who’s about to strike again.
Except they’ve got nothing. No leads. No suspects. Just a pile of circumstantial evidence and a whole lot of hunches. Time is running out to stop the next murder—and to pull themselves back from their breaking points.
I made a prediction when I finished Risky Behavior, the first book in L.A. Witt and Cari Z’s Bad Behavior series. I’m happy to say (and not surprised, I might add) that I was right. I’m not only really going to like this series, but by the end of Suspicious Behavior I had fallen head over heels in love with both Darren and Andreas and I can’t wait until the next book is released. *sigh*
This book takes up pretty much where the last one left off. Darren has pretty much recovered from his close call and both he and Andreas are back at work. To say that they were welcomed back would be a stretch. Pretty much the entire police force has turned against them because of the fallout from their last case. Cops don’t turn on cops and even though Andreas and Darren had no choice and did the right thing, their actions turned them into pariahs. They did have a few allies, which turned out to be a very good thing…
Things start to get even more complicated when the cold case falls in their laps. Not only are things not exactly what they seem, but they have to rely on turning enemies into allies and use deception to gain the truth, more than once. If those complications weren’t enough, real life keeps barging in and making things not only more complicated but heart wrenching.
There were so many layers to Suspicious Behavior that I think that’s what drew me in even more. There was the romance, the mystery, the family issues on both sides, the conflict at work and the lack of peer support – which escalated more than once. All of that combined help turn this series up a notch. Readers have to wait until January of 2018 for Reckless Behavior, but knowing L.A. Witt and Cari Z, I have no doubt it will be well worth the wait.
