This story was as active asD.D.Warren's desire for a man.Narrators were good.Not CleanFoul Language.

I couldn't put this one down.

This was a pretty horrific case: an entire family is murdered. Pretty cut and dry at first, but of course things are never as they appear in a Lisa Gardner mystery. This is where the Alex and D.D. meet up for the first time, an immediate attraction brewing. D.D. is smitten once she finds out Alex can cook! Good Italian food and wine is a sure way to D.D.'s heart! The audio version as a re-read was fantastic!

Detective D.D. Warren is called to the scene of a mass-murder. At first glance, it looks like a father has killed his three children and wife before taking his own life. As D.D. and her crew look into possible motives, they discover another family massacred. Is it just a coincidence? Or are these murders somehow tied together?This story is told by three women. D.D. Warren is the cop investigating two murder-suicide cases. Victoria is a mother of a troubled child she is afraid will someday kill her. Danielle is a nurse in the pediatric psych ward. She is also the lone survivor or a murder-suicide when she was a child. This is a very dark story in the D.D. Warren series. Some of the scenes concerning the mentally disturbed children were a bit hard to read. I liked that each chapter was told by a different character. Both Victoria and Danielle were sympathetic characters. I felt like I didn't learn anything new about D.D. even though this is the fourth books she has appeared in. My rating: 4 Stars.

Ok, so, DD did not annoy me as much as she did in the previous book The Neighbor, but she still somehow manages to remain my least favorite character in her own series. At least this time she doesn't focus on one suspect and try to make that person the killer no matter what. However she still doesn't strike me as the sharpest knife in the drawer. Her technique for finding a killer seems to be 'That guy did it!...'No, wait, she did it!'. I had to shake my head at the fact that she seemed convinced early on that on person old killed his entire family despite the fact that the evidence clearly ruled that person out on sheer physical merits. I really liked Danielle, the primary narrator of this book. She is a nurse in a pediatric psych ward where through the novel we get to hear stories about children with behavorial disorders, some of which do make the children incredibly violent. I was also very affected by the narration of Victoria, a mother of one of the kids. It was just sad. But just like in the previous book I was very satisfied with how the story wrapped and the fate of these characters.I really, really dislike reading stories that deal in children in jeopardy..kidnappings, molestation etc. So far with this series it is two-for-two with this kind of storiy. I do like how Gardner is able to create a compelling story and some really sympathetic characters with some great depth. But if the stories continue to focus on molested children I may have to say goodbye to this series.It is also a shame that the titular main character just annoys the crap out of me. I think one of my biggest problems with DD, besides the fact that she doesn't seem to, you know, figure out stuff through investigation, is that she doesn't seem to be in the job in order to seek justice for her victims. She strikes me as a person who just likes to catch bad guys and show how big her balls are. She's incredibly antagonistic when she is questioning people. Even people who her own evidence proves are not likely to be involved in the crime.Truthfully, I think A lot of my lack of warmth toward her could do with the fact that so far in the two books I've read in this series, the only time we spend in DD's head is to hear about 1) how pretty/hot/sexy she is 2) how much she loves to eat and 3)how desperate she is to get laid. The most substantive time we get in characters' heads are of the people who are the probable perps. Gardner does such a good job with making them 3-dimensionally human and making DD somewhat opaque that I just can't seem to warm to DD. And truthfully in these last two book, DD didn't do much to solve her own cases the other characters just handed the resolution to her.But I plan to try out the next book, despite DD I am enjoying Gardner's writing.