The Lost Ones (Detective Jackie Cook series Book 1) – ARC Book Review

The girl is sitting upright, her dark brown hair arranged over her shoulders and her blue, blue eyes staring into the distance. She looks almost peaceful. But her gaze is vacant, and her skin is cold…

When Detective Jackie Cooke is called to the murder scene, she has to choke back tears. Missing teenager Chloe Smedley has finally been found – her body left in a cold back yard, carefully posed with her bright blue eyes still open. Jackie lays a protective hand on the baby in her belly, who seems to kick out in anguish, and vows to find the brutal monster who stole Chloe’s future.

Breaking the news to Chloe’s mother is heartbreaking, and Jackie is haunted by the woman’s cries. She knows too well the terrible pain of losing a loved one: her own brother went missing as a child, the case never solved. Determined to get justice for Chloe and her family, Jackie sets to work, finding footage of the girl waving at someone the day she disappeared. Did Chloe know her killer?

But then a second body is found on the side of a busy motorway, lit up by passing cars. The only link with Chloe is the shocking way the victim has been posed, and the mutilated body convinces Jackie she is searching for a disturbed and dangerous predator. Someone has been hunting missing and vulnerable people for decades, and only Jackie seems to see that they were never lost. They were taken.

Jackie’s boss refuses to believe a serial killer is on the loose and threatens to take her off the case. But then Jackie returns home to find a brightly coloured bracelet on her kitchen counter and her blood turns to ice. It’s the same one her brother was wearing when he vanished. Could his disappearance be connected to the murders? Jackie will stop at nothing to catch her killer… unless he finds her first…

This is the first book of the Detective Jackie Cooke series.

The story starts with the discovery of a body of a girl named Chloe who was mutilated. Chloe was suffering from Down’s Syndrome and when Chloe’s mother cried over the death of her daughter, Jackie was determined to bring justice. But then a second body was found, murdered in the similar fashion and Jackie thinks she is dealing with a serial killer. Meanwhile, her boss threatens to cut her off from the case as she refused to believe that there’s a killer on loose.

The writing was spot on! The author did a good job of drawing the reader into the story and making the reader feel like they are a part of the story. The story is fast paced though in my opinion not much of twists and turns that I would like to see in a psychological thriller. Nonetheless, what I really liked about this book is the diverse cast of characters–Jackie’s partners Dave who is I supposed is Chinese and Shazia who is a Muslim so I do like the diversity in the book. Besides solving the crimes, I do like the personal life of Jackie–how her husband left her for another woman and how she was dealing with her pregnancy while solving and chasing after a killer. It was, in my opinion a unique thing in the book. Overall, though the ending was predictable, I liked the ending.

If you are looking for a start of a detective series, then I will recommend this series–worth four stars!

Many thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for the ARC. The review is based on my honest opinion only.