Serial killer thrillers are a dime a dozen anymore, but this one added just enough of a twist to make it halfway interesting. It will also make you cringe slightly whenever you have to handle a bottle of drain cleaner for a while after reading. 
 The main mystery is pretty conventional with a quirky female reporter getting pulled into a police investigation. If that's all there was too it, then it wouldn't be worth reading. 
 However, the more interesting portion revolves around the relationship between a female serial killer, Gretchen Lowell, and the detective, Archie Sheridan, that she tortured before being captured. The author reportedly got tips on writing violence from Chuck Palanhuik, the author of Fight Club, and that may explain why the gore in the torture flashbacks seems more horrific than the rest of the book. 
 To the author's credit, she avoids turning this into a Silence of the Lambs type of story, and the mystery of what happened while Archie was Gretchen's captive is what will keep you turning the pages rather than the weaker main story.