I was shelving returns in the mystery section at the library — alone, because our evening volunteer called out — when I decided to pop in All His Pretty Girls on my earbuds. Fluorescent lights humming, empty stacks stretching out behind me. Perfect vibes for a serial killer procedural set in Albuquerque. Or so I thought. By the time I got to the killer's POV chapters, I was genuinely looking over my shoulder between the 600s and 700s like some unhinged librarian in a horror movie. Which, to be fair, is not far from reality.
So here's the thing about Charly Cox's debut in the Alyssa Wyatt series: it's not reinventing the wheel. You've read this setup before. Female detective, personal connection to the case, killer who's playing a game. The bones are familiar. But the meat on those bones? That's where it gets interesting — and where Kate Zane's narration earns its keep.
The Killer Gets His Own Voice (And It's Unsettling)
Zane does something smart here. She doesn't just differentiate between characters with surface-level vocal shifts — she changes the temperature of her delivery depending on whose head we're in. The killer's chapters come through lower, slower, almost conspiratorial, like he's whispering directly into your ear canal. The victims get these higher, breathier voices that carry genuine panic. And Alyssa herself lands somewhere in the middle — steady, professional, but with cracks that widen as the case gets personal.
Now, I'll be honest: when Zane first started voicing Alyssa, the register felt oddly low. Like she was voicing a character fifteen years older. It threw me for maybe the first twenty minutes. But then something clicked — whether Zane adjusted or my brain recalibrated, I'm not sure — and suddenly that lower register worked. It gave Alyssa weight. Authority. By the midpoint, I couldn't imagine her sounding any other way.
The narrator commits. That's rare. Especially in a book with this many perspectives bouncing around — detective, killer, victims, family members — Zane keeps every thread distinct without resorting to cartoonish accents or vocal gymnastics. The younger characters skew higher and lighter regardless of gender, which is a subtle choice that actually helps you track the cast without a scorecard.
Dread on a Timer
What Cox does well — and what separates this from the pile of interchangeable detective thrillers cluttering my Audible library — is the ticking clock structure. You know the killer is watching Alyssa. Alyssa doesn't. That dramatic irony is everything. Cox doesn't rush through it either. She lets you sit in that discomfort, chapter after chapter, knowing the collision is coming but not when.
The scene where Callie McCormick is found in the mountains — beaten, barely alive — sets the tone early. This isn't a cozy mystery. There's real brutality here, and Cox doesn't flinch from it. But she also doesn't wallow. The violence serves the plot rather than existing for shock value, which — as someone who's spent 200+ podcast episodes arguing about this exact distinction — I appreciate more than I can say. Notes on an Execution lives in that same disciplined space — brutal when it needs to be, never gratuitous, and all the more devastating for it.
This understands that horror isn't about gore — it's about dread. Even though it's technically a crime thriller, the killer's chapters operate on pure horror logic. The way he talks about his victims, the possessiveness, the calculation. Zane's delivery during those sections made my skin crawl in the best possible way.
The plot twist toward the end genuinely caught me off guard. I won't spoil it, but I will say that Cox plants her seeds early and trusts you not to notice them. When it landed, I actually stopped shelving and just stood there in the aisle like an idiot, processing.
Who Needs This (And Who Doesn't)
If you're deep into the Kendra Elliot or Angela Marsons catalogs, you already know what you're getting into and you're going to love it. This is comfort food for the procedural thriller crowd — familiar structure, executed with enough personality to stand on its own. If you scare easily, skip. If you don't, you need this — especially in audio, where Zane's performance turns the killer's perspective from creepy-on-paper to genuinely menacing.
If you need every beat to be unpredictable? You might find the first half a little conventional. The personal-connection-to-the-killer reveal isn't exactly unprecedented territory. But Cox earns the trope by making Alyssa's reaction feel real rather than melodramatic, and Zane sells every ounce of it. Cold Vengeance pulls a similar move — familiar procedural scaffolding propped up by a lead character whose emotional unraveling you actually believe.
Content warning: violence, abuse, sexual content, language. This one doesn't pull punches.
Shelved Under: Worth the Late Night
I listened to the last two hours at home, in the dark, because that's how horror — and horror-adjacent thrillers — is meant to be consumed. Shirley (my cat) was unimpressed. I was on edge. At eleven hours, it's a solid investment, and at 1.25x or 1.5x speed it clips along without losing anything. My podcast listeners are going to love this one, especially the ones who keep asking me for thrillers that actually commit to being dark. This commits. First in a series, and yeah — I'm already queuing up book two.
