FBI Profiler Series from Elizabeth Heiter, STALKED (#4)

It may take a while before FBI suspense fiction written by women catches up in terms of publicity with what the taller sex is writing -- Elizabeth Heiter's "The Profiler" series ought to speed the process along, though. The fourth in this series, STALKED, takes profiler Evelyn Baine into new terrain in several ways: (1) She's tracking a vanished teen, Haley, in a time period well past when such cases usually end badly. (2) She's got to liaise with a prickly local police force in order to enter the case, and that's downright hard. (3) Her romantic relationship with former Hostage Rescue Team operator Kyle McKenzie is out in the open at last -- but also under immense stress, as Kyle faces the possibility that he may never be physically able to return to the HRT job that's the center of his self image.

And as Evelyn's own case heats up, becoming more dangerous, the pain she's inadvertently causing for Kyle could cripple her investigative instincts.

Set in the DC area, STALKED twists the assumptions around lost teens into new versions, ramping the suspense. (Lee Child and Tess Gerritsen are among the suspense authors praising the series and verifying that Heiter has her Bureau facts right.) And when the questions around Haley start interlocking with issues of possible human trafficking on a nearby college campus, the book becomes a must-read, a true page-turner.

Recommended -- and for those as intrigued as I was, the preceding books in the series are Hunted, Vanished, and Seized; the paperback original's publisher is MIRA.