Breaking Steele

THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME...JUST MIGHT BE GAMING ITSELF.

Gory video game violence comes home to roost when two store managers are brutally murdered in the back room of their gaming shop just before peek holiday season. The corporation that owns the store is doing everything it can to keep the matter quiet-but they won't succeed if detective Jasmine Steele cracks the case. Because said corporation has plenty of skeletons in its closet; and one of them is far too familiar to our heroine...

Kimberly Amato serves up a heart-pounding, chilling addition to the Jasmine Steele hard-boiled mystery series-a fast-paced police procedural that's as gripping as it is eerily personal. And it comes with a captivating (although, as Jazz might say, a slightly "nerdy") bonus: a heaping dose of the fascinating ins and outs of video game subculture. Which is far more murderous than the average reader would suspect.

A routine call lands hardass detective Jasmine Steele and her longtime partner Will Everts at the scene of a grisly crime-two employees of a mega-corporation called Gamer Syndicate are discovered in a pile of blood, tortured, with their throats slit, and cocaine on or near them. Just as Jasmine begins to suspect the meticulous job was done by a calculating professional, she gets a jolting confirmation-literally: the joint blows up while it's full of cops. All signs point to the shop being involved in activity much more treacherous than video games.

Understandably, Gamer Syndicate isn't pleased with the notion that a murder was committed on their property. Not to mention that you can't have a double homicide with drug implications when you have a billion-dollar game release in a month or so. But what Jasmine can't abide is their apparent refusal to cooperate with the authorities-at all. The sole witness is a 19-year-old kid named Tucker Winslow, a clerk at the shop. And his employer's keeping him silent.

Jasmine thought she was done playing games with criminals. Suddenly the case is full of them. And she has a hunch her old nemesis, the corrupt-and downright evil-Garrison clan, is at the control panel.

Alongside her big brother-esque ex-Marine partner Will and smart, savvy (not to mention sexy) girlfriend, psychologist Frankie-with some loving comic relief from her live-in nephew Chase, who's growing up way too fast for her comfort... Jasmine must navigate the complex ins and outs of greedy corporate America at its most corrupt to solve a gruesome murder mystery-and finally put a ruthless enemy to bed.

A chilling hard-boiled treat for fans of gritty murder mysteries like those by Karin Slaughter, Mo Hayder, and Alex Marwood, not to mention those with a weakness for female cops, from the BBC's Jane Tennison up to Rizzoli and isles. And as an added bonus, author Kimberly Amato's no-holds-barred commentary about the ills of social media-and corporate America-is as apt as it's wry and witty.