Detective Margot Phalen

In the backseat, the baby started to cry. He turned the radio down and the Fleetwood Mac song faded away as he faced toward the little girl. “Shh, shh baby. Daddy will be right back,” he said, leaving the car running as he disappeared into the trees.

Twenty years ago Ed Finch – America’s most notorious serial killer – used the Bay Area as his hunting ground.

Now, his daughter Margot is a homicide detective with the San Francisco Police Department who has spent her whole life trying to forget who she is.

But her daddy won’t let her forget.

When Margot receives a phone call from his lawyer, she learns that Ed is back – transferred to death row at San Quentin. And her father has a message for her: he’s willing to disclose some long-held secrets. But there’s a catch. She has to visit him.

He knows she won’t be able to resist the chance to find out the truth about his victims.

So now she’s in her car outside the gates of the maximum-security prison, counting slowly to ten like her therapist taught her.

Every instinct tells her to turn around. But she can’t help wondering if she’ll be able to catch a glimpse of the man who was once her father, somewhere under the surface of the monster he’s become – and whether he’ll finally reveal the truth about what he did, all those years ago, when she was the baby in the backseat.

The start of a new series perfect for fans of Robert Dugoni, Karin Slaughter and Gregg Olsen, The Killer’s Daughter is a dark, compulsive thriller packed with unexpected twists, introducing a flawed heroine you’ll root for even if you’d never want to live a day in her shoes.