I really enjoyed the third book in the Kovac and Liska series. We have Kovac and Liska involved in a case that involves a judge (Judge Carey Moore) that is attacked after giving out a controversial ruling related to a defendant's prior bad acts not being allowed to be introduced to a jury when he goes on trial for the murder of woman and her two foster kids.

Kovac is at first not looking forward to the assignment. He doesn't care for Judge Moore now that she is a judge. When she was a prosecutor many in the police force liked her. They thought they had a shoo-in now when they brought defendants to appear before her. She quickly disabused them of that notion by not showing favoritism to the prosecutor or defendant. I do love how for Kovac that is a betrayal. He ends up liking Carey though when he sees how she is with her daughter and he realizes that something is up with her marriage.

Liska is still dealing with juggling her job and her personal life. Being a mother to two boys with an absent ex, Liska keeps wondering is it fair to still do homicides and not switch to something that will keep her at home more. 

 

Honestly the partnership between Kovac and Liska is what keeps me reading this series. They get each other and the other detectives in homicide run together like a very well tuned machine. 

For the first time ever though we get to see a slightly out of control Kovac in this one. He is very focused on Judge Moore's husband and you start to see that Kovac may be dealing with a bit of a "crush" for her despite how he first felt about her. 

 

I do think that the secondary characters were developed very well. We have the man that many want to see dead for murder (Karl Dahl) we also have Kovac unraveling key players involved with Moore's husband. And we have a detective who had to walk through the house and find three dead people who now haunt him who is focused on getting justice. And we also get a very quick appearance by Kate Quinn (formerly Conlan) who we now assume is married to John Quinn based on what Kovac reveals.  

 

The writing was great and so was the flow. 

The main reason why I didn't give this five stars though is that there was still the unanswered question related to Judge Moore's husband. It is just left dangling. I purposely re-read "The 9th Girl" after this and it does reference this book/case and Judge Moore so that was nice. I just wish that Hoag had wrapped up all loose ends in this one. 

Though I know that Hoag has "Ashes to Ashes" as the first Kovac and Liska book. I always thought "Dust to Dust" was the first book in the series. Mainly because we get Kovac and Liska's third person POVs in this one and the last book really focused on John Quinn and Kate Conlan. "Dust to Dust' has Kovac and Liska investigated the death of an IAB officer with ties to a legendary police officer. Though ruled a suicide, both Kovac and Liska believe the officer was murdered. There are ties to an older homicide from decades ago.

 

I love Kovac and Liska. They bounce off each other very well and you can see why they work as partners.

Kovac is twice divorced though at his heart he does want to be with someone. We see him starting to click with a lieutenant in IA. This is also the beginning of the Christmas light wars he has with his next door neighbor. I don't know why that whole thing tickles me, but it does. Kovac makes mention of Kate Conlan from book #1, and even goes and sees her and John Quinn (now together and happy). Even though Kovac would love nothing more to ignore the calls from the top to close the current case they are working, he and Liska still push ahead. 

 

Liska is a divorced mother of two still hung up on her ex. You get to see her trying to juggle being a detective along with being there for her two boys. It's nice to see a female homicide detective who is apparently well liked be her colleagues and very good at her job. 

 

We get some great secondary characters that I can't say too much about. I really enjoyed Amanda Savard (the lieutenant from IAB) as well as callbacks to book number one. 

I thought the writing was very solid. The current case ties into at least two other side plots, but I found that everything works. 

The setting of Minneapolis always makes me think of winter. I have no idea why. Probably because most of Hoag's books seem to take place during the fall/winter. 

 

The ending was a gut punch to me. I didn't see the events coming and all I could think was if only at the end. 

Even though this is called the first Kovac and Liska book it's really not. The book focuses on Kate Conlan who is a former FBI agent and her former lover Special Agent John Quinn. These two do appear in "Ashes to Ashes" but after that, I can't even remember if we see them again. This is a pretty good start to the series that stars Kovac and Liska. not everything is going to involve serial killers though, some of it just involves terrible people doing horrible things to someone else. I did love the dialogue in this one and the ending was really good. 

 

So I finally finished "Mindhunter" the other day and started going back through my Hoag backlist. She did a really good job with the mystery/thriller aspect of this, while also including profiling in this. 

 

Kate Conlan is now a crime victim's right advocate. Living in Minneapolis now, she hopes to recover from her broken marriage. When she is called in to deal with a young woman who may be a potential target of a serial killer due to what she saw. The FBI is called in, and there enters John Quinn who is a profiler. Due to their past with each other there's some friction. Quinn is also dealing with the fact the local police are not exactly welcoming at first. Or let's say Kovac is not at first. Liska weirdly keeps hitting/flirting with him or whatever that was. You realize that in the next book, Kovac had a thing for Kate Conlan who he often says resembles Rene Russo. I do wonder what would have happened if Hoag pushed things along more in that line.  

 

I did like Kate a lot and wish she show up in future books. She's great at her job and has an overbearing and gross boss. John annoyed me a bit here and there with regards to Kate. 

 

I did like the team aspect when we get down into the local police. Kovac and Liksa complement each other and I can see why Hoag kept writing about them. They may not be in this story as much, but what we do see makes you yearn for more. 

 

We also get into the "mind" of the serial killer in this book called "The Cremator". 

 

The writing was really good and the flow works from beginning to end.

The setting of Minneapolis seems bigger than what I always thought it would look like if I ever went there in real life. We get a lot of local politics happening in this one too. 

 

I did love the ending in this one and have to say that the reveal was very well done. 

I just realized that I have been reading Tami Hoag's Kovac/Liska series since I was around 14 or so. I found Dust to Dust in my mom's bedroom one day and promptly snuck it away once I read the back of the book jacket. I didn't realize it was second in the series (and I hate reading stories out of order, more on that in my next review) and so when I finished it I remember being bent out of sorts because there were references to something else that happened and I realized then this had to be the second or third book. After some snooping in my parents bedroom I found Ashes to Ashes. Then I promptly read that and Dust to Dust afterwards. Even though the series follows partners Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska I thought the series always seemed to focus on Sam more. I didn't mind this, because though I love Liksa's character, she always drove me a bit crazy when it came to her interactions with her ex and her sons. There was too much of that for me going on in this one. The strongest parts were the sections that focused on Sam and his new partner. I was disappointed in the rush ending and the lack of them towards the end when it became the Nikki show. So still a five star read, just not a five star favorite read for me.

This is the fifth Kovac/Liska novel written by Tami Hoag. If you have not read the prior books please note that there will be spoilers regarding the earlier books in this series. I finished Cold Cold Heart last year and remember being disappointed by the lack of Sam and Nikki in that one. They had a couple of token appearances and all it did was make me wish for another book starring them. I was happily granted my wish this year.

For long time readers, we know that Kovac and Liska have been partners for what it seems like forever. Sam is eternally alone with some romantic entanglements here and there (can we get him a stable girlfriend?) with Liska constantly sparring with her ex Speed. Though they are not that great in their personal relationships, they are both excellent detectives. What is funny is that I really didn't care for either character that much in Ashes to Ashes. Kovac was really set up as a thorn in the side of John Quinn who was really the star of that book for me, as was Kate Quinn. We got a glimpse of the two detectives at work, but I am not going to lie, they were really both jerky off and on. That all changed in Dust to Dust which really was 100 percent focused on Kovac and Liska. You get to get inside their brains and see what made them both work and why they were both insanely good at their jobs. Followed up by Prior Bad Acts (I loved this one) and the 9th Girl (oh man so so good) I was really happy with where the series was going. Though we as readers could keep seeing Liska's growing discontent with the hours of working homicide since she wanted to be there for her two pre-teen and now teenage sons. The Bitter Season picks up really after the events of Cold Cold Heart with Liska now working cold cases and Kovac working with his now third new partner. I don't know how much time has elapsed between books, but it seems like it has been a while.

Though Liska is a solid and great cop, she is stuck having to re-open a cold case she doesn't think is remotely solvable and having a misogynistic retired detective in her face while she tries to figure out who murdered a star sex crimes detective 25 years earlier than the start of the book.

Kovac is training to train his newest partner and finding him lacking in every way to Liska. He misses her though he understands why she transferred. A double murder of a rich white couple has Kovac and Taylor (the new partner) investigating whether this double murder was a home invasion gone wrong or something worse.

So for me Kovac is my favorite out of this paring. The ongoing feud with his neighbor about his Christmas decorations, his sadness at his lack of a love life and his un-ending crush on Kate Quinn make me love him. Add in his smart mouth and his brains and you got yourself a great detective. We don't get a lot of Kovac in this one though except when he is working the case and dealing with his new partner. I hope that Taylor sticks around in the next one, he and Kovac together after a while do start to mesh together and I loved the older mentor teaching the young guy the ropes trope that was going on in this one.

Liska felt like same stuff, different day. She is still not happy with her ex and even though she knows it upsets her one son she and he still fight with each other. Frankly not a lot of it made a lot of sense to me. Liska already knows the guy is a disappointment, I don't get why she still thinks fighting is the way to go. Finding out that she realizes that working cold cases are not giving her the same sense of satisfaction as homicide was interesting though. As a reader I wonder what is Liska going to choose. She starts to realize that both of her kids are going to be out of the house soon, so does it make sense to give up what she wants in order to make their last few years at home as "normal" as she can? I did like the question of what does it mean to have it all as a single working mother. However, I felt like too much was going on for Hoag to really focus on this issue that much.

We get old familiars in the homicide unit (not enough of them though) and some new characters as well. I have to say that Kovac's partner Taylor was great. I hope we get to see him involved in future stories.

The writing was great and I thought that up until the end the flow was perfect. We tended to go back and forth to Liska and Kovac though I think this book focused more on Liska. I wish it had been a bit more even for me. And honestly, the Liska stuff felt very boring after a while. We had her dealing with a lot of road blocks and just reading about them made me tired. Kovac's case was much more interesting and had the battiest characters ever.

The setting of Minneapolis in the winter is always bleak and Hoag plays that up to perfect effect in this one.

Like I already said, the ending was a lot rushed. We had a lot of loose ends to tie up and I wish that we had spent more time on that. It didn't feel like a real ending when we got to it, it felt like the chapter that happens before you get to the epilogue. There are a lot of unanswered questions about where do Kovac and Liska go from here. Looking forward to the next one.

By: Tami Hoag