Then a dial tone..
Shrewd, hardened New York homicide detective Jasmine (“Jazz") Steele’s just come back from a grisly crime scene involving the body of a brutally-beaten young girl, the second she's investigated this week. That was horrendous, but with these eight words, ending ominously in “your son,” Jazz’s immediate fear is for her vulnerable nephew, Chase, who’s already been through hell in his seven short years. In Kimberly Amato’s hard-boiled yet deeply emotional police procedural, no one is spared tough breaks and turbulent anguish. A lesser cop than Jazz would barely be able to cope.

Still recovering from the murder attempt that nearly took her life, tough-as-nails New York homicide detective Jasmine Steele is slowly coming to grips with a world that's seemingly gone mad. She has every reason to fear death: her parents are both long gone, and she watched her brother bleed out following a drunk driving accident that left his wife dead and his son an orphan. Now Chase lives with his Aunt Jasmine--Jazz for short--and life was readjusting for them both until a serial killer gunning for Jazz almost resulted in the murders of both Chase and Jazz's longtime actress friend Hadley. And there are still loose ends she’s desperate to tie up…

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…

This nicely-priced bundle of Volumes 1-3 of Kimberly Amato’s Jasmine Steele series is made to order for fans of hard-boiled police procedurals, badass female sleuths, and bargains. Those who can't get enough of the exciting new wave of hard-boiled women sleuths, created by writers like Megan Abbott, Laura Lippmann, Lisa Lutz, and Vicki Hendricks will love Amato’s take-no-prisoners style, her unflinching attention to harrowing detail, and her tough-as-nails but soft-hearted detective.

VOLUMES 2 and 3 of Kimberly Amato’s heart-stopping Jasmine Steele series are collected in this nicely priced bundle, and if we do say so, this series has it all—a tough-as-hell yet complex female cop and the kind of pulse-pounding plots you might find in a psychological thriller. Jazz is very much a family kind of woman—and her family’s a bit unconventional; that is, what's left of it. She’s had a lot of heartbreak; by now, she can pretty well stand up to anything. Readers will love her as much for her compassion and loyalty to friends and family as for her bravery. Still, we feel we should mention:
Jasmine’s not for the faint-hearted. But hard-boiled police procedural fans will rejoice.