In a recent conversation, someone mentioned that they were revisiting Kelley Armstrong’s Nadia Stafford series because they needed some bananas distraction and a series about a hit woman with a moral code worked. And then I found the first book, Exit Strategy, available in my AudiblePlus catalog. It was perfect. Disconnected enough from reality to be distracting, but not so disconnected that I had to pay attention to deep world building. The narrator of the three books, Jennifer Ikeda, does a great job.
Exit Strategy introduces us to the basics of the Nadia Stafford world. Nadia was a cop in Toronto, from a family of police officers. She shot and killed a suspect during an arrest and after being cleared of wrongdoing, she was encouraged to retire. With her retirement money she bought a rundown wilderness lodge. To keep the lodge going, she takes the occasional mob contract hit. Her mentor, Jack, pops by or calls occasionally to talk to her. Exit Strategy opens on two murders. The first is an elderly woman murdered by a serial killer, the Helter Skelter Killer. The second is Nadia’s hit, a mobster in New York City. As Nadia makes her way home, she hears the news that her hit is being investigated as a murder by the serial killer. Though that’s soon dismissed, it makes her nervous. Jack arrives and tells her the serial killer is suspected of being a hit man and all the professionals are now in danger. He invites her to join him and some other professional killers in hunting down and eliminating the Helter Skelter Killer. This absolutely bonkers premise introduces Nadia to the larger underground world of professionals. She meets Jack’s mentor, Evelyn, and works closely with with two other killers, one of whom is clearly a possible love interest. We know that potential relationship will never have legs, because Jack is clearly the end game love interest. But before we can get to that romance, we have to briefly consider that Jack might be the serial killer. Mr. Charming with a bonkers backstory, Quinn, makes for an excellent Mr. Right Now. The serial killer is caught and Nadia goes back to her bucolic wilderness lodge having made some contacts in the underworld of professional killers.
Those connections come in handy in the second book, Made to be Broken, when Nadia’s teen employee and her baby go missing. While these are books that obviously have quite a bit of violence, in the second and third books, the violence is primarily directed towards women and children. Made to be Broken and Wild Justice delve into a rape and murder in Nadia’s past. It comes up in Exit Strategy, but it’s more relevant in the later two books. In the midst of investigating Sami’s disappearance, Nadia gets a call that Jack needs help. Jack then needs to help Nadia with her investigation. Almost the whole gang gets back together, challenging their own ideas about being lone wolves. It also becomes clear that Armstrong has created a running joke that Jack is the least imaginative hitman ever. Nadia, with assistance from Jack and Quinn, takes care of some truly loathsome people and goes back to her lodge. She starts a relationship with Quinn, but Jack has bonded with her lodge and gives her a puppy.
Wild Justice continues the journey into Nadia’s past, but this time it’s the central mystery. Someone is targeting Nadia, and it appears to be related to the rape and murder of her cousin, which happened when Nadia was 13. Jack is there to help, but her romance with Quinn has hit a snag, making asking him for help awkward. There’s a secret vigilante society (introduced earlier) that comes into play, and several hanging threads are resolved. My romance loving heart was happy with the end of the book, and I may or may not read the two remaining novellas at some point.
