HUNTED (FBI Agent Aria Hunt 1) by Chase Austin

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date April 24, 2025

FBI Agent Aria Hunt’s career went up in flames after Denver debacle. Now she’s stuck in the Bureau’s basement, until five kids vanish, their abductions linked by a chilling pattern only Aria can decipher.

Each crime scene is clean. Too clean.

But when they find a brilliant mathematician and FBI consultant gutted in his study with bloody equations smeared across his walls, Aria knows the killer’s design is far more complex than simple kidnapping.

The children aren’t just victims; they’re pieces in his deadly game.

Paired with Agent Ethan Parker (who makes it clear he’d rather work with anyone else), Aria races to crack the killer’s code as the once-in-a-lifetime solar eclipse approaches. With each disappearance, the killer’s spiral tightens, and Aria realizes the children will die on the eclipse day unless she finds the killer.

And as she deciphers the twisted logic behind the abductions, Aria uncovers a terrifying connection to death of her twin brother in her childhood, forcing her to confront her own demons to save the children.

The clock’s ticking. The killer’s brilliance is his most terrifying weapon. And Aria’s beginning to suspect this case has more to do with her past than anyone realizes.

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REVIEW: HUNTED is the first instalment in Chase Austin’s contemporary, adult FBI Agent Aria Hunt crime thriller focusing on FBI Agent Aria Hunt.

Told from several omniscient third person perspectives including Aria Hunt, HUNTED focuses on the search for five missing children, abductions that may be connected to Aria’s past. FBI Agent Aria Hunt has been relegated to the Bureau’s basement in the wake of a disastrous assignment where our heroine was blamed for the loss of lives. Aria Hunt is neuro-divergent, and sees everything in patterns, and it is her ability to see patterns that allows our heroine to solve the crimes that could never be solved but the abduction of five children, all with extraordinary mathematical abilities finds our heroine pulled into a spiral of impossible odds wherein our heroine must solve complete a series of impossible tasks to find the children she is hoping to save but all is not as it appears to be, and Aria is thrown back into the past, into a life she was forced to leave behind.

The world building is detailed, complex and with mathematical equations, patterns, and science-fiction overtones focusing on one woman’s ‘beautiful mind’. As patterns emerge, Aria is able to focus the chaos of her mind, patterns in which numbers reveal the clues to unsolvable crimes.

There is a large ensemble cast of interesting and dynamic secondary and supporting characters. We are introduced to Agent Ethan Parker whose was too quick to judge our story line heroine; assistant director Katherine Vance, as well as Aria’s former mentor Diana Washington, and several FBI Agents, and law enforcement officials.

HUNTED is a story of madness and obsession, power and control, concept and reality with a slight speculative fiction assertion and theme. The action packed premise is dramatic, dark and imaginative; the characters are charismatic, dynamic and determined. HUNTED ends on a bit of a cliff hanger.

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy