MMA champ turned FBI special agent and BAU specialist Dakota Steele is as tough as they come—and as brilliant, too, able to crack serial killers that no one else can. But this new case is unlike anything she’s seen, and Dakota, weighed down by the demons of her own past, may have just reached her breaking point.

Without Mercy is the debut novel of a brand-new series by critically acclaimed and number one best-selling mystery and suspense author Ava Strong.

Dakota’s last case broke her, driving her to quit the FBI and return to the hard streets of her South Dakota hometown. She is weighed down by a lifetime of fighting and by the demons of her dark past: her missing sister who vanished when Dakota was a teenager. Her estranged father, who she still can’t bring herself to speak to.

The killer she let get away.

Dakota has hit her low point.

Only the most desperate case—and the tough love of her partner—can lure her back.

Victims are disappearing along empty stretches of desert highway, with no witnesses. The landscape is desolate, the people tough and dangerous. And the police are stumped.

Time is running out before the next victim is taken, and it’s up to Dakota to connect the dots.

Can Dakota stop him in time?

Or will her own demons take her for good?

A complex psychological crime thriller full of twists and turns and packed with heart-pounding suspense, the Dakota Steele mystery series will make you fall in love with a brilliant new female protagonist and keep you listening late into the night.

Books two and three in the series—Without Remorse and Without a Past—are now also available.