Devils Rock by Gerri HillDevil’s Rock by Gerri Hill is the kind of audiobook that makes me love Gerri Hill’s cop stories all over again.

Deputy Andrea Sullivan left Los Angeles behind to settle in the picturesque town of Sedona. When she discovers the body of a woman dumped in the desert she is pulled unwittingly into the middle of a time-sensitive case to catch a serial killer before he moves to a new dumping ground.

Agent Cameron Ross travels into town in a large motorhome kitted out with a special computer that could calculate the potential sites for body dumps. Her job was to input the data of the latest body and help the local cops where she could. The suspected killer, Patric Doe, escaped the law once and Cameron wants to make sure he doesn’t escape again.

Cameron doesn’t intend to become distracted or personally involved. She is just the woman behind the computer. Then she meets Andrea and suddenly a little distraction doesn’t seem like such a bad thing after all.

The Writing Style

I love how Gerri Hill pieced this one together. It was a fun, delightful listen with each chapter moving the story along swiftly and yet developing the characters and the romance perfectly. I wouldn’t change a single word.

The Characters

The cast was fun. The two leads were wonderfully tortured and so sweet together. Bonus points for the cat, even in its minor role. If I weren’t already married then I would want to marry Cameron Ross (just on a side note).

The Narration

Abby Craden did a stunning job of narrating this one. There were a number of male voices and I didn’t want to cringe once.

She also did a great job with building the tension and keeping the story flowing. This is really important otherwise, you end up zoning out while listening to an audiobook and having to start again from the beginning of the chapter.

The Pros

The fact that the two main characters were not the leads on the case was awesome. I loved that I got a behind the scenes look in a non-typical way. I didn’t even know I wanted this book until Gerri Hill gave it to me.

The Cons

That you haven’t listened to it yet is my biggest con. Luckily this is easily fixed – see that buy button down there?

sheena's favouriteThe Conclusion

If you like a good cop story with a sexy romance interwoven and brilliant narration then you should skip along to Amazon and get this audiobook right now. I say skip because that shows the joy I have in my heart for this audiobook.

Gerri Hill is an exceptional author. Each book is different and exciting, each character unique and each work perfect. She makes me want to happy sigh.

Excerpt from Devil’s Rock by Gerri Hill

“Decomp,” she said. “That’s a smell I’d hoped to never encounter again.” She reigned in her mount, then slid from the saddle. She didn’t want to spook the animal by walking upon a rotting corpse. Her handheld GPS guided her on and she too covered her mouth and nose. The stench was unbearable.

She stopped when she saw it. It was definitely not a bear.

“What is it?”

She walked closer, seeing the remnants of blond hair, although the face was nearly gone, the skin turned nearly black. The ribcage was exposed, the organs missing as was most of the flesh. What remained was being consumed by maggots and beetles. The arms and legs had been badly gnawed, most likely by coyotes. She took the small, digital camera from her pocket, taking pictures from different angles.

“I’m guessing, blond female,” she said. “We’re missing part of a leg here,” she said, pointing where the right lower leg should have been. She took a closer picture of that. “Wild animals probably carried it off.” She looked up. “See if you can find it.”

“Are you serious? You want me to look for her leg?”

“We came up here to retrieve this body. Let’s try to bring all of it back.”

Randy shook his head. “No way. I’m not touching that. We can’t bring it down.”

She turned to him and put her hands on her hips. “So you want to just leave her here? Let the animals finish with her?”

“How the hell are we going to get her down?”

“The aluminum rack we brought.”

“Yeah. For a body. That’s…that’ll fall apart if we try to move her.”

“We don’t have a choice. Now put your gloves on.”

She shook her head, seeing the squeamish look on his face. He’d been a sheriff’s deputy for ten years. The other guys on staff had all been here at least six years. Yet they always turned to her for instruction. That wasn’t always the case. She was a woman, she was new to the area, new to the department. But it didn’t take long for them to realize her knowledge of law enforcement far surpassed their own. Sheriff Baker was the only one who didn’t defer to her. Not in public, anyway.

She tried not to think about what they were doing or how the bones were barely intact when they moved her. Not that she suspected this was a crime scene, but she tried to get as much physical evidence as possible. The lab in Phoenix would give them cause of death. If it was a homicide, perhaps there was some usable trace evidence under and around the body.

“This is the grossest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life,” Randy said when they’d finished taping up the plastic tarp. The smell was only slightly better.

“Yeah, it ranks pretty high on my list too,” She stripped off the latex gloves she wore, stuffing them into a crease of the tarp. “Put yours there too. I’ll tape them down.” She motioned to the horses. “Get get the mule.”

Andrea led the way back down the trail, pulling the mule behind her. The last thing she wanted was for the mule to get spooked and take off. Not that she didn’t trust Randy, but his history with horses was legendary. They usually did what they wanted and he held on for dear life. She didn’t want the mule–and their body–to take off down the canyon.

“Hey, Andi, why’d you leave LA anyway?”

She looked over her shoulder. It was a question she’d heard numerous times in the last two years. You’d think her evasiveness would have given them a clue she didn’t want to discuss it. “I wanted to,” she said, using the answer she normally gave. Wanted to, needed to, had to.

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Series: Ross & Sullivan

Devil’s Rock

Hell’s Highway 

Angel Fire  – overlaps with the Hunter series

 

Bits and Bobs

ISBN number: 9781594932182

Publisher: Bella Books

Audiobook Publisher: Audible Studios

Narrator: Abby Craden

Gerri Hill Online 

 

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Note: I received a free review copy of Devil’s Rock by Gerri Hill. No money was exchanged for this review. I will always review books as honestly as possible and on occasion I refuse to review books.