THE KILLER COLLECTIVE

Series heroes join forces with other righteous killers to punish
sexual predators in Eisler’s latest thriller (Zero Sum, 2017, etc.).

A secret internet site called Child’s Play features videos of
horrible sexual abuse and torture of children. Feds suspect members of the
Secret Service may be participants, but their investigation is inexplicably
shut down. Meanwhile, John Rain specializes in “services” that appear to have
natural causes, but he turns down a hit job on Livia Lone because he doesn’t
kill women or children. Livia is a sex-crimes investigator for the Seattle PD
and has a ferocious hatred for the world’s “freaks and predators.” Born in
Thailand and originally named Labee, she was sold by her parents to the Lone
family in Idaho, where she suffered unspeakable abuse. Now she works on both
sides of the law, putting creeps in prison when she can—but “the only thing
better than a rapist in prison was a rapist in the ground.” She has secretly
killed at least a dozen of them, and she joins forces with professional killers
such as Rain to bring down Child’s Play once and for all. The most interesting
of the bunch are Dox, who helped Livia kill a child molester in Thailand and
would “kill a whole lot of people” to protect her, and Delilah, the blonde
Mossad agent who uses her body as well as her gun. One of their threats is
Oliver Graham Enterprises (OGE—“you couldn’t spell rogue without
O-G-E”), which wants to fight America’s wars and incidentally kill John Rain. The
stakes may go even higher than “six active pederasts in the Secret Service” as
the story reaches its bloody crescendo. It is rich in backstory, though it can
stand alone. Still, Livia Lone (2016) is the ideal introduction to a
sympathetic, damaged, and vengeful character.