#Titanuary ‘No Mercy’ Joanna Schaffhausen

About the book…

Police officer Ellery Hathaway is on involuntary leave from her job because she shot a murderer in cold blood and refuses to apologize for it. Forced into group therapy for victims of violent crime, Ellery immediately finds higher priorities than “getting in touch with her feelings.”

For one, she suspects a fellow group member may have helped to convict the wrong man for a deadly arson incident years ago. For another, Ellery finds herself in the desperate clutches of a woman who survived a brutal rape. He is still out there, this man with the spider-like ability to climb through bedroom windows, and his victim beseeches Ellery for help in capturing her attacker.

Ellery seeks advice from her friend, FBI profiler Reed Markham, who liberated her from a killer’s closet when she was a child. Reed remains drawn to this unpredictable woman, the one he rescued but couldn’t quite save. The trouble is, Reed is up for a potential big promotion, and his boss has just one condition for the new job―stay away from Ellery. Ellery ignores all the warnings. Instead, she starts digging around in everyone’s past but her own―a move that, at best, could put her out of work permanently, and at worst, could put her in the city morgue.

Buying book 2 in the Ellery Hathaway series is a no brainer-‘The Vanishing Season’ was an absolute belter of a debut novel so who wouldn’t want to spend more time with her?

‘No Mercy’ was published by Titan in ebook and paperback formats in 2019, followed by ‘All the Best Lies’

Finding Ellery without a case to investigate is like finding Speedbump, her sausage dog, without a wet nose. It’s inconceivable that she has nothing to work on, and even when she technically is not supposed to be working, she manages to entangle herself in 3 mysteries.

Technically she hasn’t really done much wrong, she is off the force pending investigations into what happened at the end of ‘The Vanishing Season’, and attending counselling sessions for victims of violent crime. And if she happens to ask certain questions and then find herself involved in the cases of a wheelchair bound mother who lost her son in an arson attack, a rape victim who has tattooed herself with the words her rapist used,’No Mercy’, who reminds her far too much of her younger self, then surely she is just being a good citizen?

As Ellery digs deeper, her externalised feelings towards the perpetrators of crimes that have left their victims living in perpetual states of fear and suspension of reality, bring her closer and closer to a hugely damaging and far reaching revelation.

She involves her erstwhile companion and biographer, Reed Markham who has links to the arson case , and , more importantly, is still working in the FBI so has access to resources that Ellery doesn’t currently have. And bringing Reed back into her orbit has real world consequences for both of them. Both are , in essence, survivors of very different acts of violence which have re-structured their childhood experiences. In this case, Ellery’s mother has not moved away from the apartment where Ellery was snatched outside of, whilst Reed is an adopted, mixed race son of a murdered single mother. His sisters pressurising him to have DNA tests to contribute towards a family tree Christmas brings challenges of its own as he wrestles with his origin story whilst acknowledging the loving family that is around him.

An intriguing and involving thriller which crosses several decades, multiple crime solving techniques, dogged police work and a determined pairing of individuals who literally-and figuratively in Ellery’s case-nail their pasts into cupboards and don’t allow them to consume them.

Neither has their traumas weaponised, which is what I love about Joanna’s writing. She makes no apologies or excuses for Ellery’s behaviour and openly, candidly, discusses the fallout from sexual assault. It is not a character trope or a plot device, this is an essential part of Ellery and Wendy’s stories which has left them altered forever. It is a part of them but does not need to be the whole of them. They take the worst parts of what they have been through and use it to drive themselves, Wendy uses this force to make herself ‘unlovable’ and carrying her trauma on her sleeve whilst Ellery, for all that the world knows of her treatment at the hands of a serial killer, is very much a closed book.

Reading about her and Reed slowly, cautiously building a relationship is so agonising but so real, it pulls you in and you want more for them, you want better for them and that is when it hits you, these people have stepped outside the boundaries of the page and become very real to the reader.

And that is the essence of a fantastic writer, one who makes you care about her characters and what is happening to them.

Added to this, the curveball she throws at the end makes you want to plunge into Book 3, ‘‘All The Best Lies’. And also hope there will be a 4th outing for Ellery. Maybe a fifth. I’m not greedy*

*yes, yes I am!

About the author…

Joanna Schaffhausen wields a mean scalpel, skills she developed in her years studying neuroscience.

She has a doctorate in psychology, which reflects her long-standing interest in the brain―how it develops and the many ways it can go wrong.

Previously, she worked as a scientific editor in the field of drug development.

Prior to that, she was an editorial producer for ABC News, writing for programs such as World News Tonight, Good Morning America, and 20/20. She lives in the Boston area with her husband, daughter, and an obstreperous basset hound.

Twitter @slipperywhisper @TitanBooks

Links-https://www.joannaschaffhausen.com/