BOOK REVIEW: Mallory's Oracle by Carol O'Connell

Detective Kathy Mallory. New York's darkest.

You only underestimate her once.
The soul of a thief.
When NYPD Sergeant Kathy Mallory was an eleven year old street kid, she got caught stealing. The detective who found her was Louis Markowitz. He should have arrested her. Instead he raised her as his own, in the best tradition of New York's finest.
The mind of a cop.
Now Markowitz is dead, and Mallory, the first officer on the scene. She knows any criminal who could outsmart her father is no ordinary human. This is a ruthless serial killer , a freak from the night-side of the mind.
The courage of a hero with nothing to lose.
And one question troubles her more than any other: why did he go in there alone?

Publisher: Headline

Pages: 272  

I'm always on the look out for a new crime series and I think I may have found it, Mallory's Oracle is the first in the series of Mallory novels by Carol O'Connell.
Kathy Mallory is a New York detective but her talents lie in technology not out on the streets. She was taken in at the age of eleven by NYPD detective Louis Markowitz. Louis and his wife Helen raised Kathy and set her on the straight and narrow but Mallory still harbours some demons and is always prepared to bend the law if she feels it is the right thing to do.
When Louis Markowitz is murdered, Kathy is first on the scene. She has no idea why her father went after a suspect alone and how he was outwitted, he was the smartest man she knew. Mallory is given indefinite leave to get over her father's death but she has no plans to stay at home with her feet up. Instead she embarks on an investigation of her own to catch a ruthless serial killer.
Mallory's oracle was a really good read. Kathy Mallory is a well-crafted character, she is not necessarily likeable but she is damaged enough to be interesting to the reader. I feel like I have only scratched the surface of this character and I think we will find out more and more as the series develops.
This book requires you to pay attention, I felt a little bombarded by characters and suspects at the beginning but once I had a handle on it all I was really interested to find out how it all fitted together.
The New York setting is perfect; it provides a gritty and realistic backdrop to the story. In this book we meet characters from all types of backgrounds and it showed that murder doesn't just affect the down-trodden.
Mallory's Oracle is a great read, I am looking forward to the rest of the series.

Many thanks to Caitlin at Headline for sending me a review copy.