Book Review: A Killer’s Devotion

Reviewed by Erin Britton

A cat-and-mouse legal thriller that pits crusading attorneys against ruthless criminals, where the outcomes are likely to be deadly

The sequel to A Killer’s Tears, John Bae’s A Killer’s Devotion chronicles the explosive continuation of the deadly game played between Ian Ramsey and those seeking to bring him to justice for framing Hope Kane for the murder of her husband and the disappearance of her daughter. 

A tense mashup of an action-packed thriller and a nail-biting courtroom drama, it is a tale of dangerous obsession, the quest for bloody vengeance, and the lengths people will go to ensure their interpretation of justice is served.

As Jackie Sire stands in quiet contemplation on the cliff edge outside a nameless facility, she notices a familiar figure nearby. “He was the same dark-haired man taking his morning walk to the rock formations high above the ocean. He never missed a day. His pace had quickened over the months he’d been here but he never wavered from the path that took him to that spot. … He ignored everyone who tried to speak to him. He’d just go about his business. Alone. Silently.” As she ponders what brings him to the same spot every morning, she thinks back on the mysterious details she remembers about the man. Known as Patient 241. She saw him on a TV broadcast of the trial. Given the secrecy and the fact the man clearly did not want to interact with anyone, she kept quiet about seeing him regularly. 

Something is different today, however, as today the man asks if she is okay. “A part of her wanted to say something to him, but she couldn’t think of anything to say. She had no idea what to say to a person who was supposed to be dead.”

As for Patient 241, while he is concerned that Jackie might be planning to jump off the cliff, he is more concerned about what is going on in the outside world. Specifically, he wonders why Ian Ramsey is still at liberty, despite everything he has done to expose his corruption and criminal dealings. “But in the four months since the Hope Kane trial that turned into a story about Ramsey and his crimes, he still had not been indicted. What were they waiting for?” 241 also misses his fiancé, former colleagues, and friends—who all think he died in the courtroom.

It turns out Patient 241 is Tom Rose, the defense attorney who exposed Ramsey’s culpability for murder and kidnapping on national television. Rose had agreed to fake his death and disappear so that it would protect those closest to him. But it has become clear that Ramsey is literally getting away with murder, so he had to come up with his own plan to bring the villain down.

It’s lucky then that Rose’s group has an unexpected ally in Jackie Sire, who turns out to be a CIA hacker recuperating at the facility after being shot during a mission and abandoned by her agency superiors. She is definitely in no rush to return to work. “But, the CIA still served a purpose for her. She needed the CIA’s resources for the project she decided to take on – the project involving the dark-haired man.” She’s impressed by what Rose managed to pull off—even if Ramsey is still walking free for the moment—and she’s determined to help him finish what he started. 

As wheels within wheels begin to turn, both overt plans and conspiracies are set in motion as the crusading attorneys and Jackie attempt to find Ramsey’s weak point,   while Hope searches for a way to protect herself and her daughter and ensure there is some kind of future awaiting them.

Meanwhile, Hope Kane knows that she is being watched, likely by Ramsey’s henchmen. “This was happening more regularly. He hadn’t tried anything yet. It was clearly an intimidation tactic to send a message that he was watching her.”

I know what you’re thinking! This is a complex plot. There are a lot of characters. It can be difficult to pull off the right balance of recapping past events in a series and ensuring that you know what’s happening moving forward. But John Bae does such a great job of this with A Killer’s Devotion, using the first few chapters to subtly cover the key points from A Killer’s Tears and introduce the main characters. The information provided in this way feels organically incorporated into the main story and matches perfectly with the overall tone and pace. 

While issues such as the real identity of Patient 241 will come as no surprise to those who have read the first book, the early reveal both introduces new readers to the kinds of crosses and double-crosses they can expect from the series and provides a neat way to recap Tom Rose’s history and establish Jackie Sire as a new character. It’s probably still beneficial to have read the first book, but it’s certainly not necessary.

The detail of the characters’ various personalities and motivations comes out clearly as the story progresses—allowing for a fair bit of double-dealing, of course. All of the major characters are well-rounded and plausibly behaved, whether for the good or the bad. 

Tom Rose is a strong and appealing person with a lot of depth—an illness, a forced disappearance, a deep dedication to rescuing Hope and bringing down Ramsey. He even had to let his fiancé believe he was dead; this evokes considerable pathos and adds a certain air of melancholic hope to the story.

Despite being a newcomer to the series, Jackie Sire quickly emerges as an engaging (anti)hero and a major driver of efforts to expose Ramsey’s criminal activities. Bae has crafted a particularly rich backstory for her, including her work with the CIA and her impressive computer skills. She’s a complex and sometimes morally dubious character, which makes her actions especially intriguing to follow.

One aspect that gets largely overlooked in crime novels/thrillers is the detail of the role played by henchmen, particularly when things start going south for the big boss. Bae makes no such mistake and instead incorporates a significant plot thread dedicated to the thoughts and experiences of Dom McGee, formerly Ramsey’s right-hand man. 

Overall, A Killer’s Devotion is a fast-paced legal thriller in which the characters engage in strategies and counterstrategies to ensure each other’s downfall, and despite having all the complexity of a game of chess, theirs is a game with truly deadly consequences. A word of warning, though: it’s not the last book in the series, which means the wait for the final installment is likely to be an anxious one.

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