This is the weakest of any of the books by Ellis that I've read so far. The mystery made very little sense and the characters were pretty universally behaving like idiots (except for Cat).
The Nikki Galena books are not nearly as good as the Jackman & Evans books - but they were her starting place and she's improved a lot as a story teller in the interim. I'm not giving up on Nikki Galena, and I'll be curious to see the series develop.