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2000s: A woman is found dead in the Santa Monica mountains and the MO looks suspiciously like a murder which took place on the other side of the country more than two years ago…
The Samaritan
What you need to know before your trail
When a body is found in the Santa Monica mountains, LAPD Detective Jessica Allen knows this isn’t the first time this person has killed. The MO reminds her of a case that she saw more than two and half years ago on the other side of the country. Determined to uncover the truth, she starts to investigate for it seems that a serial killer is stalking lone female drivers. Known as The Samaritan, he is anything but.
Enter Carter Blake, a skilled manhunter, who quickly gets on the scent of the samaritan. The police are at first suspicious – just how does he know so much about the man they’re searching for?
Beware of the samaritan on the dusty American roads…
Travel Guide
Starting off in Yungay Province in Peru, where the past starts to come to light, the novel switches from here eight years ago, to present day LA and to a woman who driving in the rain, crosses the infamous Mulholland Drive in downtown LA. Breaking down, someone offers help…
“People who do not live in LA life to complain that it all looks identical, an endless sprawl of street after street, pretty much looking the same”
Not far from LA sit the Santa Monica Mountains – a mountain range in Southern California located along the Pacific Coast and with its highest peak some 948 metres, the landscape is rugged, remote and at open to the elements.
A beautiful place stained when a body of a young woman is found there.
“The earth was damp from the rains the previous night as they picked their way up through the rocks and brush”
More so when detective Jessica Allen recognises the way in which the killer ended this woman’s life.
The police and their investigation into the Samaritan is complex and the relationship between Allen and her partner Detective Mazzucco is fraught since Mazzucco’s wife is jealous that he is working with such an attractive woman. The team have a lot on their plate and the investigation at first looks as if it’s going nowhere. This is an investigation with a difference.
Imagine the thrills and spills of being on the search for a killer tracking down lone female drivers on the highways and byways of the USA. And a man from an elite fighting unit tracking him down.
Streetview Maps
1) Santa Monica Mountains
2) Mullholland Drive
Booktrailer Review
Susan @/thebooktrailer
A man praying on lone female drivers in LA – and acting as a Samaritan is the ultimate monster really when you thin about it. someone who seems to want to help and then does the exact opposite.
I think what made it even more of a thriller was the fact that the locations – LA and the Santa Monica mountains are the very palaces that would be scary to drive through on your own. I think everyone not just women is scared of something happening like this. The hunt for the person responsible is a real thriller and the reveal of the victims and how and why this is being done… well when you read about Carter Blake and the ways he sets about tracking down the Samaritan was a road trip that was very violent in place and sickening to a large extent but the thriller thread wove all the way through for me.
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