Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Last Known Victim
    Last Known Victim
    Last Known Victim
    Audiobook11 hours

    Last Known Victim

    Written by Erica Spindler

    Narrated by Susan Ericksen

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    August 2005.
    Amid death and destruction, hurricane-savaged New Orleans has a new dark force to fear.

    As the rescue efforts unfold, a grisly discovery is made at one of the massive refrigerator “graveyards.” One of these metal hulks contains six human hands - all female, all right hands. The press has dubbed the unknown perpetrator “The Handyman.” But with no way to trace the origin of this refrigerator, and with evidence lost to time and the elements, the case dead-ends.

    Captain Patti O’Shay is a straight-arrow, by-the-book cop who is assigned to the case. Her tough, unflinching character is fractured when her husband and fellow police captain is found murdered - surprised by looters taking advantage of the post-storm chaos.

    August 2007
    Patti, still grieving and disillusioned, gets a call from homicide: skeletal remains have been unearthed in City Park. The unknown victim - a female - is missing her right hand. But for Patti, this grave holds something even more shocking. Found beside the victim’s bones is her husband’s police badge.

    Casting aside the very “rule book” by which she has lived her life, Patti is fearless - but so is the killer. As he stalks her she is forced to question all she believes in, to doubt the code she has lived by…because she knows that if she doesn’t find The Handyman first, she will become his last known victim.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateSep 25, 2007
    ISBN9781423338130
    Author

    Erica Spindler

    No matter how innocent the story being relayed to me is, I can twist it into something pretty damn frightening. I've learned the real trick is not sharing these versions with those relaying the story. It tends to make people avoid me.” ~ Erica Spindler A New York Times and International bestselling author, Erica Spindler's skill for crafting engrossing plots and compelling characters has earned both critical praise and legions of fans. Published in 25 countries, her stories have been lauded as “thrill-packed page turners, white- knuckle rides and edge-of-your-seat whodunits.” Raised in Rockford, Illinois, Erica had planned on being an artist, earning a BFA from Delta State University and an MFA from the University of New Orleans in the visual arts. In June of 1982, in bed with a cold, she picked up a romance novel for relief from daytime television. She was immediately hooked, and soon decided to try to write one herself. She leaped from romance to suspense in 1996 with her novel Forbidden Fruit, and found her true calling. Her novel Bone Cold won the prestigious Daphne du Maurier Award for excellence. A Romance Writers of America Honor Roll member, she received a Kiss of Death Award for her novels Forbidden Fruit and Dead Run and was a three-time RITA® Award finalist.  Publishers Weekly awarded the audio version of her novel Shocking Pink a Listen Up Award, naming it one of the best audio mystery books of 1998. Erica lives just outside New Orleans, Louisiana, with her husband and two sons and is busy at work on her next thriller.  

    More audiobooks from Erica Spindler

    Related to Last Known Victim

    Related audiobooks

    Suspense Romance For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      A Visit To The Border

      Nov 19, 2018

      A Visit To The Border
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Plagues Steph Cha

      Sep 29, 2020

      The Plagues Steph Cha
      9 min read

    • Article

      Previews

      Jan 12, 2020

      Previews
      3 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Jul 19, 2023

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Paranormal Cold Case Investigating History’s Most Spine-chilling Encounters

      Jul 7, 2021

      I’m in prison. It’s a crisp, dark night, the stars twinkle above me in the West Country sky and I am standing in the courtyard of HMP Shepton Mallet, formerly the oldest working prison in the UK until it finally closed its doors in 2013. Its most fam

      2 min read

    • Article

      Come the Renaissance

      May 20, 2020

      I’VE escaped from the Abbey. Am I skipping up the drive back to the house, swinging my guitar case and trilling I Have Confidence in Me? Not so much. Bit more Fidelio, if I’m honest: creeping, wan, unshaven, shielding my eyes from the unfamiliar sun.

      3 min read

    • Article

      This Weekend

      May 18, 2020

      Now more than ever you have the perfect excuse to stay indoors, so take advantage of your isolation and catch up on your burgeoning list in Netflix… From the comics by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez comes the story of three siblings and their mother,

      5 min read

    • Article

      Suspicious Circumstances

      Aug 10, 2022

      Suspicious Circumstances
      7 min read

    • Article

      Taz-mania

      Jan 18, 2021

      Taz-mania
      3 min read

    • Article

      Letter From The Other Shore

      Apr 16, 2020

      Right now, I’m adhering to that old mantra of “One Day at a Time” and that seems to work while I’m white-knuckling it through the apocalypse. The post Letter from the Other Shore appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • Article

      Suspicious Circumstances

      Aug 10, 2022

      Suspicious Circumstances
      7 min read

    • Article

      Quotients

      May 7, 2020

      Quotients
      8 min read

    • Article

      Stranger Places

      Aug 9, 2018

      It began like any normal pregame in the woods. Naked, alone, hungover, a sweaty sleeping bag in the back of a dusty pickup truck, miles from civilization. Predawn in a narrow Utah river bottom, canyon country, early July. A Thermos of lukewarm coffee

      18 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Jul 10, 2019

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      May 25, 2022

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Karolina

      Jun 15, 2019

      I first saw Karolina outside the Sumesa on the corner of Avenidas Oaxaca and Álvaro Obregón. She was smoking a stubby cigarette, a sled-like backpack hitched to her shoulders. I stopped short, felt my heart lurch. Could it be? Karolina was my brother

      31 min read

    • Article

      Country Diary

      Aug 5, 2020

      Country Diary
      2 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Feb 2, 2022

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Not Everything Turns to Gold

      Oct 2, 2018

      Theodore Roosevelt once said, “When I am in California, I am not in the West, I am west of the West.” The Rough Rider’s koan has been widely viewed as a celebration of the limitless California adventure, but it’s also a reminder of the dizzying, vert

      4 min read

    • Article

      From Wild Mustangs To Reimagined Housing, Check Out These Can't-miss Podcasts

      Nov 17, 2023

      Looking for dinner conversation starters this Thanksgiving? The NPR One team is here to help with podcast recommendations from across public media.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Books That Hook

      Jul 3, 2020

      Books That Hook
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Last Known Victim

    3.5/5

    93 ratings10 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Highly suspenseful throughout the entire book! Excellently written with a variety of characters who had complex personalities and fascinating interconnectedness. I've visited New Orleans, so it was easy to imagine the scenes in the book.
    • 5/5
      This book was off the chain I loved the twists & turns had me guessing until the very end! Any story that is set in New Orleans & surrounding areas are the best & the characters has so much depth & details I felt I knew them! This is the first book I've read\listened to by Erica Spindler & I must say I'm her new #1 fan! Can't understand why I'm just discovering her but glad I did!!!
    • 2/5
      One would think based on the way thriller writers write about them that every fourth person in the United States is a serial killer. To say that this sub-genre is overdone would be a massive understatement. Most of the ones I have read are not very good, and Last Known Victim is worse than most. Set in New Orleans, post-Katrina, the serial killer du jour is known as The Handyman. If that’s not a generic serial killer name, then I don’t know what is. Unfortunately the author put as much imagination and inventiveness to the naming of the killer as the rest of the novel. Every weak trope that is used in this sub-genre can be found here to the unbelievably unrealistic nature of the killer. I won’t spoil it, but when I found out who the killer was, I wanted to wretch. The killer was so obvious and so stereotypical that it was almost like this author was spoofing serial killer novels. Unfortunately, this isn’t a spoof. It’s just a bad novel. I would suggest staying away.Carl Alves – author of Blood Street
    • 3/5
      Another book I did not read during this month/year. What possessed me to read it I'm not sure except that i had nothing else on my personal shelf at home (that was unread) except this. Oh, and it was raining that day... I truly don't remember what my reaction was to the style of writing, as I don't actively try and guess who the evil person is. Hard as this may be to believe I actually don't care what happens, and that is why I rarely read mysteries. 2.5/5 just because that is exactly a 50% rating.
    • 3/5
      I am a huge fan of Erica Spindler. If I recall right, the first book I read of hers was Fortune. I enjoyed it so much, I went to purchase every book she’d written to date. I’ve always found her to be very consistent with the quality of her writing.I was very excited about the release of her latest book, Last Known Victim. However, after reading it, I was a little disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, it was a very good book, but it just didn’t have the impact on me that some of Spindler’s other books did. I haven’t really figured out why, yet. It could have been the ending. When the killer was revealed, I wasn’t shocked. I just kinda thought, “Oh, ok.” It could have been the characters. The characters in Last Known Victim were brought back from See Jane Die and Killer Takes All.Anyway, I’ll have to think on it some more. For now, I’ll just sit back and wait, patiently for Erica’s next book.
    • 2/5
      This was such a 'blah' book I have trouble even giving it two stars; the characters were wooden, the writing clichéd and repetitive. Not sure if I'm interested in picking up her other books now. Suspected the killer early on, but went back and forth between that particular person and another person; ultimately, the big 'reveal' was not a surprise at all.
    • 4/5
      A great read, though, in my opinion, not one of Erica Spindler's best. The plot was definitely interesting and kept me entertained. This is a sequel, though you could easily read this as a stand-alone and have absolutely no problem understanding the story.I didn't find the story to have any one true "main character". A family of cops are chasing a serial killer called "The Handyman". A lot of family dynamics are woven into the story, so it becomes much more than a typical serial killer novel. However, I found the story to drag a little at times. (At 522 pages, it could easily have been 100 pages shorter.) Also, I figured out who the "bad guy" was about half way through. There were a couple of good twists that had me second-guessing myself for a brief period and the end result was good enough that it didn't matter that I had guessed correctly.
    • 4/5
      Erica Spindler is in my top ten favorite/must read authors for a reason. She has more than proved herself as a talented, page turning author. Her characters are solid and interesting. Her facts are more realistic than a lot of books in the same genre. In LKV, Patti O'Shay, a captain in the New Orleans police department is out to find her husband's killer. The first clues come from an abandoned refridgerator left in Katrina's aftermath. One of my three suspects eventually became unmasked as the killer. This isn't a bad stat. I like to be kept guessing, and Spindler suceeds in that again here. I hate having to wait a year each time for a new Spindler book. If you haven't read any books by this author, I recommend you pick up some of the older ones first. Work your way through them to this one! Last Known Victim isn't a five star book like most of her others, but it still is way above the norm.
    • 4/5
      This was my first Erica Spindler book, and I think I’ve found a new author! The suspense is good, the characters are believable, and she does a great job of keeping you guessing. There’s more than one convincing red herring (I did *not* guess the bad guy!), and you’re not really sure if you can really trust Yvette until the very end. Patti wasn’t the greatest leading character — I found her to be a little wooden — but the other characters, especially Stacy and Spencer, make up for it. One thing to note: even though this isn’t technically part of a series, some of the characters have appeared in earlier Spindler novels, and there is reference to them. But I didn’t feel like I was really missing anything by reading this one first.
    • 4/5
      This was good. I was on the edge of my seat. I was not sure who the killer was until they told me. I guessed wrong about 4 times before the truth was revealed.