My Thoughts: Let me just start my review by saying, wow! This was the best Agent Altair book so far and I am so hoping that there is going to be a fourth one. I just hope I don't have to wait until next year for the fourth one if it is coming.
There are a lot of familiar characters that have been in all three of the Agent Altair books: Holt, Tino, Vesper, Nana, and Adi. There is also the return of Max and his FBI dog Kona, who we were all introduced to in the second Agent Altar book, Buried. I was really happy to see Max and Kona return. There is also Jake, who is Agent Altair's husband who passed away four years ago. Agent Altair has been looking into his death since the previous book, Buried, where she learned new information about it.
Cut to to the Bone mentions the first book, Caged, on several occasions. If you have not read Caged or Buried though, I still think you will be able to follow the story fairly easy. But it might not hurt to at least read Caged so you have a better understanding of when they reference the Caged killer, especially since that is the story of Adi. Cut to the Bone also continues with the same patterns that were found in the previous two books, which is, there is usually a death or serious injury to a law enforcement agent and the serial killer in the book is usually using an MO that is tied to an ancient mythology. This time the ancient mythology is Egyptian.
Agent Altair is an FBI field agent but she is also a "neuroscientist who studied the brains of serial killers for the FBI's National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime" (Ellison Cooper). In the previous books, Agent Altair was looking at MRI scans of serial killers and psychopaths and in Buried, she interviewed some of them, which is also when we were introduced to Subject 037. Subject 037 scared a perfect score on the Psychopathy Checklist and has managed to creepily intervene in Agent Altair's life in numerous ways, especially at the end of Buried. In Cut to the Bun, Subject 037 continues to involve himself in Agent Altair's life and we learn some surprising things about him. I am hoping that we will continue to learn about Subject 037 in the 4th book, which I am hoping there, will be a 4th one.
The story was extremely well written and kept me at the edge of my seat. I read this book within only a few days. I found that I did not want to put it down. There are a ton of twists and turns in this book and some huge surprises that I just did not see coming that blew me away. However, I did figure out who the unsub (unknown subject) was when I was about 60% through the book and the story itself doesn't reveal who the unsub is until about 75% in.
Rating: I am giving this book a 5 out of 5. I would even consider giving it a 6 out of 5 if I could because that is just how good it was. This was seriously the best Agent Altair book so far, and was better than the previous two. I am dying to know what happens next with Agent Altair, Subject 037, Tino, Vesper, Max and Kona, Holt, and Adi. I sure hope that I don't have to wait another year because that will be sooo difficult.
About the Author: Ellison Cooper has a Ph.D. in anthropology from UCLA, with a background in archaeology, cultural neuroscience, ancient religion, colonialism, and human rights. She has conducted fieldwork in Central America, West Africa, Micronesia, and Western Europe. She has worked as a murder investigator in Washington DC, and is a certified K9 Search and Rescue Federal Disaster Worker. She now lives in the Bay Area with her husband and son. 
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