The Bone Forest — V.J. Chambers

Can an FBI Academy dropout catch a vicious serial killer?It's been fifteen years since Vivian Delacroix unleashed her followers on the town of Cardinal Falls. The cult members killed anyone Vivian told them was a threat to their beliefs.Now, another killer takes young girls of nine or ten, all related to Vivian's original victims. He drugs them, suffocates them, and painstakingly arranges them in ritualistic poses. The bodies give up no evidence to the killer's identity.When Wren Delacroix happens upon the latest victim, she's forced to admit to herself that she came back to her home town because of her interest in this case. These dead girls, they remind her of things long buried from her own childhood. And when she sees a certain man lurking at the edges of the crime scene, her past smacks her in the face like a cresting wave of disquiet. Even though she dropped out of the FBI Academy and tried to flee from the dark parts of herself, she can't run away.Before she knows what she's doing, she's spouting her fully formed profile of the killer to Detective Caius Reilly, head of the tri-state task force, and she's begging him to let her help.She needs to solve this case and stop this killer.If only to prove to herself that she's nothing like her mother Vivian.For fans of Anne Frasier or Chelsea Cain.