April 12, 2021 | No Comments
A Deadly Influence
by Mike Omer
Date Published: April 1, 2021
Published By: Thomas & Mercer
Page Count: 443
Publisher’s Description:
Lieutenant Abby Mullen is no stranger to crisis. As the hostage negotiation instructor for the NYPD, she deals with worst-case scenarios every day. Nothing fazes her anymore.
That all changes when she gets a call from Eden Fletcher, a fellow survivor of the infamous Wilcox cult. The two haven’t spoken since the night of a tragic, fiery massacre, when their paths diverged. But now Eden needs Abby’s help: someone has kidnapped her son and is demanding a $5 million ransom. As Abby throws herself into the case, she can’t help but wonder why the kidnapper has targeted Eden. But Eden refuses to talk. She’s silent about the relics of their shared past hanging on her walls. About the kidnapper’s possible motives. About what’s happened in the years since she and Abby parted ways.
As the truth closes in, Abby realizes that her past may not be as far behind as she thought…and it’s come home to collect.
My Star Rating:
My Review:
A Deadly Influence by Mike Omer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Mike Omer is quickly shooting to the top of my list of favorite mystery writers. I adored the Zoe Bentley series and was sad to see it end, so I knew I had to try this newest release, the beginning of a new series with another female lead.
I will say I didn’t connect to Abby Mullen as much as I did Zoe Bentley right off the bat. Abby is a detective where Zoe was a forensic psychologist, so definitely different perspectives, and Zoe had a lot more sass than Abby does so far. But Abby definitely has an interesting past that makes her uniquely qualified for the work she’s cast right into the middle of in this story.
The story centers around a local cult and the kidnapping of a young boy whose mother had escaped the cult with her two children years prior. Abby, having been a victim of a cult when she was a young child, is called in to help.
The most interesting part of this story, though, was not so much the cult, or really even Abby and her life outside of the job. It was the sister of the boy who is kidnapped and the fact that she is some kind of Instagram-famous influencer. We learn right off the bat from page one that we have a stalker in our midst, and the story develops piece by piece, adding on little by little, until we begin to shape the full picture. This was done really well. The slow build, the clues revealed in due time. It only took me a couple of days to get through the book because I kept wanting to come back to it to find out what was going to happen next.
It seems like the cult aspect of this first book will carry on into future installments of this series, and I will say that this aspect seemed to be well-researched and portrayed. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong about that, having never actually been a member of a cult and all, but it just seemed to be detailed and thought out. It definitely made me feel some kind of way to read about the cult leaders and what they were doing, especially to the younger female members, and how they manipulated people into being afraid to ever leave.
Kudos to Eden for taking her children and running when she did, for seeing past the bull****.
But just when all is revealed and everything is solved and everyone goes back to living their lives, Omer sneaks in and ends the book with a fabulous setup to lead into the next book. Of course, now we have to wait for the next installment to come out to get deeper into the backstory and find out more about Abby’s past. Now it’s really got my attention.