Former FBI Special Agent Sloan Burbank voluntarily retired because of an injury she sustained in a bust gone awry a couple years earlier in the Cleveland area. Savagely sliced multiple times by a crazed boy with a switchblade, the road to recovering the full use of her hand has been filled with multiple surgeries and extensive therapy. Her goal is to rejoin the ranks of the FBI as an active agent, but a goal that cannot be attained until she regains the full use of her hand.

Meanwhile Sloan fills her life with her consulting business. Her expertise had been hostage negotiation and she has crafted a business blending this skill with her self defense skills in the art of Krav Maga, somewhat different from the better known martial arts... Her many associates in law enforcement provide enough contacts to generate almost more work than Sloan can handle.

The reader meets Sloan in a seminar at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in NYC where she is participating in a seminar in "Crimes Against Women." Afterwards, she responds to a message from the mother of an old childhood friend Penny Truman. Sloan learns sadly that during the time of her medical struggles in Ohio that her friend in New York had disappeared one day over a year ago. The Trumans have enough political clout that for a long time it was a priority of the FBI under the aegis of Special Agent Derek Parker. It had slipped into the cold case files as Parker now is occupied with defusing a territorial war threatening to erupt between two rival Chinese tongs in the New York area over the killing of one tongs prostitutes.

The Trumans retain her to discover what happened to their daughter. Sloan is anything but subtle in her investigative mode and she begins her search with a fervor. She has the unique advantage of knowing the victim well, and is able to spot habits that suggest an overlooked clue. This is sufficient to reopen, and Sloan is now thrown into direct contact with her old lover Derek Parker.

Forced to work together again by virtue of the FBI dictates from higher up on Derek’s part, and her drive to find Penny on Sloan’s part, adds the romantic suspense to the novel that keeps pace with the unraveling of Penny's disappearance.

Sloan begins to find similar disappearances of women in like circumstances, whose remains have yet to be found. It is Derek who first realizes that in some bizarre fashion these women have a tenuous connection with Sloan. These disappearances had gone unnoticed by her due to her continuing struggle with her hand injury.

Even with outstanding foreshadowing, the identity of the sociopath remains elusive as the story rushes to its stunningly original climax. Twisted is definitely a keeper, but one you will reread only for the pleasure of what you missed the first time, since the plot and characters will be impossible to forget.

--Thea Davis