Stranded – No Place to Hide I don’t know how I have done it but I would love to know how I have missed Alex Kava’s Maggie O’Dell thrillers but better late than never. Stranded is a fast paced page turner of a thriller with plenty of twists and turns and working out who is the protagonist leaves you in suspense until the end. This book really is for fans of the TV show Criminal Minds and the FBI’s Behavioural Analysis Unit at Quantico. Stranded is also proof that Alex Kava is at the top of her game, understands the genre and delivers a thriller with a punch. Now all I have to do is get my hands on her previous work! Anyone that has driven around America and gone either state or interstate will know how great the interstate roads are and sometimes what a god send it is to see the truck rest stops. As an Englishman I love driving their interstates as they are straight and easy to work out where you going even later at night as long as you stay in the speed limits which are low compared to the UK and Europe. Those truck stops to a traveller are an oasis in the desert if you are a trucker or covering long distances. Maggie O’Dell has been tasked to a serial killer investigation team based out of Quantico searching for someone who is killing people at the rest stops along the interstate. Not only content with killing them he happily slices and dices the victims probably for pleasure. O’Dell and her partner Tully are sent along to investigate the latest body dump which turns out to be part of an old farmstead but they have been guided their by a prisoner called Otis. The killer had also left a mad of the I-95 in Maggie’s burnt out house and there is nothing worse really than a killer taunting the FBI as they will always come through in the end, or in O’Dell’s case will they? Tully warns O’Dell as the body count rises that this seems to be a game to the killer and that she seems to be the ultimate prize to her or him especially after CNN had profiled her. She recognises that this danger is part of her job and tries not to let this worry her. It is a fast paced game of hide and seek with her either as the prize or the victorious. You can feel O’Dell’s weariness but dogged determination in that she will not give up and try not to be too predictable for the killer. Special Agent Maggie O’Dell is a brilliant investigator and she delivers in Stranded a strong determined woman who is not afraid of anything other than her own personal feelings. Kava has created a brilliant character who shows that women are just as dogged just as determined and just as inquisitive as their male counterparts who will stop at nothing to get the job done. The intensity grows throughout the book as the pace gathers and you feel a need to finish so you can see who and how the characters develop and who wins in the end. In Stranded Alex Kava proves that women are taking hold of the crime thriller genre and making it their own and improving it with every book published.