Cordelia Black is nothing if not under control. She has a successful career as a pharmaceutical sales rep, a killer designer wardrobe (including a variety of designer stilettos), and flawless hair and makeup. She’s also an exemplary friend to her long-time bestie, Diane, and a great godmother to Diane’s daughter, Samantha (known to Cordelia as Sugar).

Cordelia has to maintain that control. If she doesn’t, her cover might be blown. You see, it turns out that after hours, Cordelia has a little…hobby. She keeps her eyes open for men who have harmed people, mostly women and children, and makes them pay. She has access to pharmaceuticals to knock them out, rents a storage unit for killing them and draining their blood, and has a rather unconventional arrangement for disposing the bodies.

"Cordelia is a fascinating character, as gruesome as she is glamorous, and readers will be cheering for her to survive to kill another day."

Word has started to get out about a serial killer targeting the men of Baton Rouge. But Cordelia takes offense at that label. She’s not a serial killer; she’s just someone who seeks to even the score, to make the world a little safer for its most vulnerable members.

It turns out, though, that Cordelia’s control rests on a precipice as sharp as the heel of her stilettos. And when Diane starts dating a new beau, Simon, who strikes Cordelia as vaguely creepy but can’t quite pin as a monster worthy of targeting, she begins to get a little careless and impulsive --- the opposite of controlled. Add to that the fact that her employer’s most lucrative medication (and Cordelia’s knockout drug of choice) has been recalled as unsafe, leading to extra scrutiny of all the sales reps’ records, and Cordelia’s own latest online dating match is a cop assigned to the serial killer case --- and you have the start of a series of events that could mark the end of Cordelia’s carefully curated life.

THIS GIRL’S A KILLER, much like other recent revenge fantasies, features a protagonist who is both vulnerable and damaged and also sexy, confident and strong. But when circumstances crack that tough veneer, the vulnerabilities come to the surface, which is where both the humor and the depth of character arise. Cordelia is a fascinating character, as gruesome as she is glamorous, and readers will be cheering for her to survive to kill another day.

The supporting characters are less well developed. Diane plays such an important role in Cordelia’s life that readers might wish she had a little more depth and individuality, apart from her relationship to the protagonist. But it seems clear that debut author Emma C. Wells intends to follow Cordelia into subsequent books, and readers can hope that Cordelia’s world --- including her friends and acquaintances --- will continue to expand and deepen as well.