Review: Devious by Lisa Jackson (Goodreads Author)

Devious by Lisa Jackson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another chilling and terrifying read by Lisa Jackson.

Devious, the 7th book in her New Orleans Series, features once again, one of my favorite detectives, Reuben Montoya and his partner, Rick Bentz.

The story opens with the grisly and horrifying murder in a chapel, of a novice nun from St. Marguerite’s Convent. When Montoya and Bentz arrive at the crime scene, they discover that the murdered nun, Sister Camille, is not an unknown victim. Montoya had dated her during high school. There’s an added coincidence when Sister Lucia, who discover the body, had been Montoya’s brother’s girlfriend a few years ago. And even the person suspected of the murder, Father Frank O’Toole, had also been a school mate.

Valerie Renard, Camille’s sister is battling with her own problems and trying to deal with her soon to be ex-husband, who makes an unexpected appearance at her place on the night of her sister’s murder.

When more nuns from the convent are killed, Val begins to feel that these murders are connected St Elsinore Orphanage, where she and her sister had lived before being adopted when they were young children. The orphanage has closed and is on the verge of being torn down to make place for a new business.

As Montoya and Bentz search into the history of St Marguerites, they begin to think that the convent and especially the Mother Superior are keeping some very dark and disturbing and even terrifying secrets, which are connected to the orphanage.

The killer is sadistic and won’t stop killing until everyone connected to the orphanage is tortured and killed.

The settings of the convent and the orphanage are depict in such vividness……the convent with dark secrets where nothing seems to be what we think…the dark menace, their occupants and how one never knows the truth about them….

As Montoya and Brentz unravel the clues left behind by the killer, Val makes a decision one night to return to the shut orphanage in the hope of finding the truth about her and her sister’s adoption. Let me tell you that the scene where she’s taken, the basement of the orphanage, gave me the absolute creeps.

I was literally shaking and my heart was pumping like crazy…..the cat and mouse game between Val and the killer at the end was shocking and brutal.

Brilliantly written, a well-crafted and intricate plot, tension filled suspense and mystery, plots and twists that leave you guessing until the very end.

I love this series and hopefully we will get more of Montoya and Bentz soon.

View all my reviews