A number of my friends have read books by [a:J.T. Ellison|1311949|J.T. Ellison|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1254857757p2/1311949.jpg], so as an author she has been on my radar for a while. I received the second book of her new series featuring Medical Examiner Samantha Owens as an Advanced Reader book, so decided to start with this series. Samantha Owens is one of those women that we find often in books these days. Smart, sexy, accomplished...in short a strong, successful woman. At least she used to be. That was before tragedy hit her two years ago. In [b:A Deeper Darkness|13261123|A Deeper Darkness|J.T. Ellison|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1329971124s/13261123.jpg|19214552], the first book in the Samantha Owens series Samantha finds that tragedy has struck again in the form of the death of her college love, Eddie Donavan. The police have ruled his death as a simple car-jacking, but his mother disagrees. Hence her request to Samantha to perform a second autopsy and take a second look.
That is the way Ellison begins this top-notch thriller. From there the plot continues at a fast pace, with enough plot twists and interesting occurrences to keep the reader interested. It is quickly obvious that there is more here than meets the eye. What do a car-jacking, PTSD, a diary of secrets written in Latin, and a ex-Army Ranger turned recluse have in common? That is the central question that keeps the reader turning pages in this thrill ride. One thing missing in this book, though, was the heavy romance angle that is usually prevalent in this type of book. I actually appreciated that as I loved the focus on the mystery part of the story.
The characters that Ellison populates this book with is a definite positive. None of the characters are cookie cutter in any way, least of all Samantha, whose demons have driven her to OCD behavior. As a mom, I don't even want to imagine what it would be like to lose a child, and that fact had me feeling a lot of empathy for Sam. The lead detective on the case is battling his own demons, as is the widow of the deceased who never felt that she measured up to Sam, and Xander Whitfeild, the reclusive ex-Ranger who was one of Eddie's best friends. Yet Ellison is able to take all of these characters and not only makes you care about their personal demons, but she does an excellent job of tying them together into a team of characters that really work.
I did find, however, that I wished I would have read the Taylor Jackson books by Ms. Ellison first. (I plan to remedy that quickly)as I believe the story of the demons that Samantha was haunted by had already been brought to light in those books. As a first time reader of Ms. Ellison's work I was a bit put off by her continued alluding to the tragedy that took Samantha's family without ever really explaining it. She finally did explain, but it was very late in the book. I think if I had read the Taylor Jackson books and been familiar with the character this would not have been an issue.
The good news, though, is that I have another bunch of books from this author to read while I wait for the third book of this series to come out in 2014.
