No Mercy (Ellery Hathaway #2) by Joanna Schaffhausen

A Review by Wendy
4 Had Me At Hello Stars
* * * *

Spoiler Free

I was lucky enough to have read the first book, The Vanishing Season by Joanna Schaffhausen. I read it in a fury to get it all, engrossed throughout.

Now we have another strong entry with the returning characters of Police officer Ellery Hathaway and FBI profiler Reed Markham coming back together to see what is what with two different cases they find themselves drawn to...

Emily is on involuntary leave...note involuntary from her job. She killed a murderer and refuses to apologize for doing it. The powers that be send her to "counseling" and little do they realize what they have done. Emily is not the type of person who is going to get all touchy-feely and share her past life with a circle of others in the therapy. She has too much she has worked to keep hidden all of these years.

Instead, Emily uses her innate skills; she listens and observes. She hears a woman in the group reveal clues which may point to a man who was unfairly convicted for an arson crime. With another member, she experiences a need so strong from a rape victim, she reaches out to her FBI profiler friend to look into it.

What happens next is a read which will take you through all of the steps a profiler goes through, a continued friendship between two professionals and harrowing thrill ride to its conclusion.

A gifted copy was provided by St. Martin's Press via NetGalley for an honest review.

Police officer Ellery Hathaway and FBI profiler Reed Markham take on two difficult new cases in this stunning follow-up to The Vanishing Season.
No Mercy is award-winning author Joanna Schaffhausen’s heart-pounding second novel.
Police officer Ellery Hathaway is on involuntary leave from her job because she shot a murderer in cold blood and refuses to apologize for it. Forced into group therapy for victims of violent crime, Ellery immediately finds higher priorities than “getting in touch with her feelings.”
For one, she suspects a fellow group member may have helped to convict the wrong man for a deadly arson incident years ago. For another, Ellery finds herself in the desperate clutches of a woman who survived a brutal rape. He is still out there, this man with the Spider-Man-like ability to climb through bedroom windows, and his victim beseeches Ellery for help in capturing her attacker.
Ellery seeks advice from her friend, FBI profiler Reed Markham, who liberated her from a killer’s closet when she was a child. Reed remains drawn to this unpredictable woman, the one he rescued but couldn’t quite save. The trouble is, Reed is up for a potential big promotion, and his boss has just one condition for the new job—stay away from Ellery. Ellery ignores all the warnings. Instead, she starts digging around in everyone’s past but her own—a move that, at best, could put her out of work permanently, and at worst, could put her in the city morgue.