Review: The Darker Side by Cody McFadyen

I received The Darker Side by Cody McFadyen for the Pump Up Your Book Promotion tour. This book was awesome! Definitely one of my top reads for 2008!

About the book:
Everyone has a secret they don’t dare tell anyone.
He’ll kill you for yours.

Cody McFadyen has shocked even the most jaded suspense fans with Shadow Man and The Face of Death. Now comes a thriller that outdoes them all, featuring a psychopath on a perverse crusade of murder. And the one woman who can stop him has a secret that will change her from the hunter to the hunted.…

A lie, a long-ago affair, a dark desire—everyone has secrets they take to the grave. No one knew that better than FBI special agent Smoky Barrett. But what secret was a very private young woman keeping that led to her very public murder? And what kind of killer was so driven and so brazenly daring that he’d take her life on a commercial airliner thirty thousand feet in midair, a killer so accomplished that he’d leave only a small souvenir behind?

These are the questions that bring Smoky and her hand-picked team of experienced manhunters from L.A. to the autumn chill of Washington, D.C., by order of the FBI director himself—and at the special request of a high-powered grieving D.C. mother.

As a mother, Smoky knows the pain of losing a child—it nearly killed her once before. As a cop with her own twisted past, she takes every murder personally, which is both her greatest strength and her only weakness. Brilliant, merciless, righteous, the killer Smoky is hunting this time is on his own personal mission, whose cost in innocent human lives he’s only begun to collect. For in his eyes no one is innocent; everyone harbors a secret sin, including Smoky Barrett.

Soon Smoky will have to face what she’s so carefully hidden even from her own team—and confront a flawless killer who knows her flaws with murderous intimacy.

I completely loved this book! Mr. McFadyen created such an intriguing storyline that I was pulled into it from the very beginning. It has great plot twists that the mystery lovers will savor. It was only predictable in that at the end of most mysteries they get their killer. I enjoyed the way the murders were brought into the story and how everything flowed.

Included with a great mystery were characters that were alive - well-developed, interesting, real. Their back story felt very real, understandable, complete and probably a story all their own. (After writing this, I looked and the first two novels did tell the back story - but I did not need them to thoroughly enjoy the characters in this novel...can be read as a stand-alone).

The book was definitely plot-driven as good mysteries are. But the character growth also made it feel like a good 'regular' fiction book as well. The mystery kept me hungry for more throughout the book while the characters had me smiling and teary at different times.

A big thanks to author Cody McFadyen and Pump Up Your Book Promotions for sending me this book to read and review. It was great and will be on my list of top books for 2008. I am adding Shadow Man and The Face of Death to the top of my tbr requested books!

Rating: 5/5 stars