The novel is full of twists and turns, plenty of suspense, intriguing characters, and several surprises -- the kind of book you want to read through to the end.  Blackwater Tango's heroing, Gena Hollender has a lot more at stake than most profilers when she agrees to help investigate the case of a serial killer because she was once one of the victims.  A page turner from the onset, there is more than one surprise in the climatic ending.

As a fellow who's pushed a lot of fiction at the masses over the years, I really enjoy a good psychological thriller.  And Blackwater Tango delivers all that one expects from the genre, including lots of surprises, complexity of plot, and a riproaring ending that leaves one on the edge of his chair.  Its protagonist is a sympathetic character, one imbued with uncommon grit but with just enough vulnerability and human frailty to make her three dimensional.

Gena Hollender is a woman with a vicious beast riding within her, the terrible but veiled memory of capture and torture that requires a good exorcism.  A working psychologist and ex-FBI profiler, Gena has intimate knowledge of one particularly nasty serial killer, psychologist turned killer Victor Trikonis.  Victor, who has long been the object of an FBI manhunt, is into the cruel mindbending of his helpless victims, all young women whom he kidnaps, tortures, and later discards with a farewell slash across the throat and an ignominious display of the remains.

His latest victim has shown  up naked from the waist down in a lobster trap at the bottom of a harbor in Maine.  This sort of ghoulish display is Victor's trademark and it send Gena, who lives in Manhattan, to Main on the hunt for her nemesis, aided by two ex-compatriots, one a cop, the other a high ranking FBI agent and Gena's ex-lover.

While hunting for Victor, whose victims begin to surface again, Gena becomes increasingly aware that whether she's in Manhattan, enjoying the close friendship of her elderly neighbor, or is tramping around the cold topography of Main, she is being stalked by the shadowy Victor, who has some undefined and unfinished business with her.

Thus we are always kept in suspense, right up to the sizzling and surprising climax.

A splendid read, a page turner.

Susan Streib, Book Reviewer for Sisters in Crime:

Gena Hollender is a psychologist with a private practice in New York.  She is currently deep into renovations of her inherited brownstone which includes a green house for her exotic plants.  In her recent past she was a criminal profiler for the FBI.

Victor Trikonis is the suspected serial killer.  He, too, is a brilliant psychologist, and a master manipulator.  He is the one that got away from Gena years ago, named but never captured.  Or, perhaps, it was Gena that got away from him.  Victor's primary interest is discovering the process the mind goes through when a free person is incarcerated.  To this end, he formed a control group of 6 young women:  one dies naturally, 1 escapes his clutches, and 4, he decided, would live, at least temporarily.  Then he fixates on the one who got away.  His plan is to punish her for escaping, then execute her.

Marcus Valenzuela is Gena's former colleague, now functioning as a detective, who calls urgently for Gena, to meet in Portland, Maine.

At Monhegan Island, ME, a fisherman hauls in his lobster traps and discovers a young woman, grotesquely bent to fit inside one of those traps.  The victim carried the signature method of a Victor Trikonis kill.

Gena arrives in Portland to find most of the original serial killer task force reunited, and no one officially acknowledges summoning them collectively.

This is just the beginning of a well constructed plot built twist upon twist of seemingly  unrelated episodes.  The fisherman who found the first body disappears.  Gena is attacked in the park after she hears gun shots.  A U.S. Senator's son is killed.  A photojournalist does a study of homeless people.  An old flame is rekindled between Gena and her former boss, Terrence Zemecke, now an attorney for the Office of the General Counsel, FBI.  The county sheriff is an ex-Texas Ranger.  Intriguing, yes, and the body count continues to climb.

This is a page turner thriller, but do not turn those pages too fast.  BLACKWATER TANGO is a full flavored book, that needs slow-going to savor the delicious locations in Maine, the misty February weather, and the fine detail of the relationships.  I could feel the damp fog in my face.  The characters are as well drawn and as interesting as their names suggest, with flaws and passions and features that make them fully three dimensional as well as individual.

I  learned a little bit more about psychology by reading this book, and a little bit more about English poetry, and a smidgen about scuba diving off the coast of Maine in mid-winter.

This book was immensely enjoyable, and I look forward to a second of what I hope will be a series.  Not only do I suspect Lisa Polisar will come up with another superb plot, but I want to know what happens, or does not happen, between Gena and the cute contractor completing the brownstone's renovations, or between Gena and the clearly smitten detective Marcus Valenzuela.  This may be Lisa Polisar's first full length novel, but she is no novice story teller!  Good job, Lisa!

Albuquerque author (and Crosswinds Weekly contributor) Lisa Polisar conjures up the dark world of a depraved but brilliant serial killer who gets his kicks from terrorizing vulnerable young women in this impressive debut novel, which features the equally smart psychologist Gena Hollender as the madman's profiler, pursuer, and wayward victim.  Hollender is a savvy Manhattanite who would rather renovate her old brownstone and cultivate exotic plants than track down suspected murderer Victor Trikonis in Maine.  But when duty calls, via the compelling invitations of two former colleagues, also her lovers, Hollender feels she has no choice ... Polisar is at her best when getting inside the head of her protagonist: "Everything inside  her said no.  Every impulse of conscious thought and reasoning, every molecule of her body said the same thing.  No.  But a part of her, when she was working at the FBI's National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, had felt more alive than ever ... Some part of her was still hanging on."

The reader is finally drawn into Hollender's deepening obsession with her nemesis when the frequency of murders increases, and the threat to her own life becomes more real.  In the end, the pursuit becomes as much a matter of personal vengeance and pride as the desire to stop a psychopath from slitting more throats.  Blackwater Tango takes its time to deliver the dramatic tension demanded of a crime-genre thriller, and the payoff is worth the wait.  Gena Hollender - and Lisa Polisar - are two names worth watching for in years ahead.