The Night Shift by Alex Finlay

The Night Shift by Alex Finlay
My Rating: ★★★★★

It’s New Year’s Eve and everyone is expecting Y2K to hit with a bang. Instead of a total digital collapse, the Blockbuster massacre happens in Linden, New Jersey. It leaves one survivor, and the killer flees, never to be seen or heard from again. At least, that’s what everyone thought until an eerily similar massacre occurs fifteen years later in the same town. Everyone assigned to the case is left wondering if they have a copycat killer on their hands, but the only way to know is to dive back into the original massacre.

I really enjoyed this fast paced and truly wild book. Told through rotating narrators, we jump back and forth between the years 1999/2000 and the present as we watch the mysteries behind the cases get fully uncovered. We mainly follow Keller, Ella, and Chris. Agent Sarah Keller is an FBI agent who is at the end of her pregnancy with twins. She assigned to the new massacre and finds herself with multiple mysteries on her hands the longer she looks into it alongside the Blockbuster case. Ella Monroe is a therapist who has been called in to counsel the survivor of the new ice-cream shop massacre. She’s uniquely qualified for the case as the lone survivor of the original massacre that this new case mimics. Finally, Chris Ford is a state prosecutor who hopes to find his brother Victor, who has been on the run for the last fifteen years.

Throughout the book, we learn a lot about nearly every character we meet. For a while, there’s more questions than answers but I can promise you that every question does get answered. In fact, that’s something I really like about this book. Every question gets answered rather than leaving the major questions up in the air when it ends. Plus, it’s easy to like the characters that we follow along with some of the characters we meet several times.

As far as the mystery goes, it’s one wild ride. I fell for one red herring and was convinced they were the real killer all along. Was I in shock when all was said and done? Yes. However, all the answers make sense and I found this to be a truly complex and wild read from beginning to end. It’s not the most fast paced and wild book I’ve read, but I would say that it’s not far behind the book that wins that award.

All in all, I’m looking forward to checking out Alex Finlay’s other books. Just don’t pick up this book expecting a lot of 90s and early millennium vibes because of Blockbuster and the Y2K memories. I can tell you that you won’t find that here, but what you will find is a very well written mystery that will take you for one crazy ride.