Malice by Lisa Jackson

4 stars

New Orleans detective Rick Bentz is seeing his ex-wife, Jennifer, everywhere. The problem is that Jennifer died in LA twelve years earlier. Bentz knows it's not his imagination, but how could Jennifer be alive? He's the one that identified her body. After receiving an envelope with recently dated photos of Jennifer or someone that's a dead ringer for her, taken in LA looking alive and well, Bentz is off to LA to find out who is messing with him and why.

Malice is the sixth book in Lisa Jackson's New Orleans series. I'm usually a stickler for reading a series in order, but I won a copy of the book and had a time limit to read it and answer some questions. Even though I had not read any of the first five books, I didn't feel like I was missing anything. There was just enough back story for each character for me to feel like I knew them, but not so much that it interfered with the flow of the story. The characters were very well developed. The story was fantastic, fast paced, and filled with suspense. I thought I knew who the culprit was, but I ended up surprised. I always love it when I'm surprised by a suspense/thriller novel because so many of them follow the same pattern and you end up feeling like you've read it a hundred times before. I didn't feel that way with Malice. I've already picked up the first book in the series and hope to get started on it soon.