Alter Ego
Alter Ego (Jonathan Stride #9)
By: Brian Freeman
“They had two dead strangers in town. One killer. One victim.”
The newest Jonathan Stride novel, The Zero Night, just released Nov 1 so I had some catching up to do before I read that one.
I started this series on book 8 (Marathon) and really enjoyed it. But when I went back to the Las Vegas part of Stride’s story it was bad.
Las Vegas Stride= Don’t Read
Duluth Stride= Read
Other than the aforementioned book, I’ve loved every Brian Freeman book I’ve read. You can always expect a good thriller from him. And most of them are pretty clean.
In Alter Ego, a Hollywood movie is being shot in Duluth about a case from years back that involved Stride (who’s a detective). He had rescued a girl from a serial killer. (As far as I can tell, that case was not a previous book in the series).
The A-list actor playing Stride (his alter ego) in the movie is Dean Casperson. Casperson is the golden-boy of Hollywood and can do no wrong.
But when a hired killer is found dead and the body of a young woman found buried in the woods, the evidence starts pointing at Casperson, maybe he’s not so good after all.
Going after such a beloved public figure can have major consequences. Stride and his team have to navigate the case and deal with the collateral.
Annnddd… there’s snow everywhere, all the time. Living in Iowa, I’ve gathered it’s par for the course in Minnesota. Which is why I won’t live there.
A fun part of this book is the crossover with Cab Bolton, a different Freeman series.
Basically Freeman’s series are like CSI: Las Vegas, Miami, New York etc. Frost Easton is in San Francisco. Stride was Las Vegas and now Duluth. Cab is in Florida (Miami I think?).
The case in Alter Ego has overlapped with a murder in Florida that Cab is very familiar with. He joins Stride in Duluth to help out.
Plus he and Maggie Bei hit it off. Freeman teases Maggie moving to Florida and teaming up with Cab which I think would be cool to shift characters around in different series. But only time will tell if that will come to fruition.
I haven’t read any of the Cab Bolton books but it kind of made me want to start that series too!
I would definitely recommend this book and am looking forward to the next two in the series!
[Content Advisory: I don’t think there are any f-words, language is mild, not much sexual content; trigger warning for rape—talked about but not described]
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