Ripper

Ripper. Isabel Allende. Harper. 2013. 496 pages. (Source: Audio library book).

First sentence: Mom is still alive, but she is going to be murdered at midnight on Good Friday.

Plot: The Jackson women, Indiana and Amanda, have always had each other. Yet, while their bond is strong, mother and daughter are as different as night and day. Indiana, a beautiful holistic healer, is a free-spirited bohemian. Long divorced from Amanda's father, she's reluctant to settle down with either of the men who want her-Alan, the wealthy scion of one of San Francisco's elite families, and Ryan, an enigmatic, scarred former Navy SEAL.

While her mom looks for the good in people, Amanda is fascinated by the dark side of human nature, like her father, the SFPD's Deputy Chief of Homicide. Brilliant and introverted, the MIT-bound high school senior is a natural-born sleuth addicted to crime novels and Ripper, the online mystery game she plays with her beloved grandfather and friends around the world.

When a string of strange murders occurs across the city, Amanda plunges into her own investigation, discovering, before the police do, that the deaths may be connected. But the case becomes all too personal when Indiana suddenly vanishes. Could her mother's disappearance be linked to the serial killer? Now, with her mother's life on the line, the young detective must solve the most complex mystery she's ever faced before it's too late.

My thoughts:  I liked this book despite the slow start for me.  There were may characters to be developed and introduced.  I think the more characters there were the more likely you would not figure out the crime too early in the book.

Recent murders in the San Francisco area is trying to be solved by a group of online people in a game called Ripper.  One Amanda Jackson heads up the group and has an inside connection of sorts.  Her father was in law enforcement, Deputy Chief.   When the murders hit close to home, her mother's fiance, things get tense.  Then Amanda's mother is kidnapped.  It's a race against the clock to find her before midnight on Good Friday.

There was some bad language in this one as I am finding is common in all Allende novels.  Over all a good suspenseful read.