🎧 Reviewed by LD | Rating: 4.1/5 | Steam: 🔥

⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read Exit Strategy yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.

The Opening

Nadia Stafford is a hitwoman. She is also, somehow, a genuinely good person — if you can set aside the part where she kills people for money. This is book one of the Nadia Stafford series and it is your introduction to one of the most interesting characters Kelley Armstrong has ever written. Just know going in that the first book is the slowest of the series and if you can push through it, what comes after is worth it.

The Full Story — Spoilers Included

How Nadia Got Here

Before the lodge, before the hits, Nadia was a cop. Her lodge was struggling financially and one of her regulars suggested she might make a good hitman. Desperate to save her lodge, she went for it. It’s not the most conventional career pivot but here we are.

Jack found her after she started. He tracked her down, decided she had potential, and became her mentor. He is a man of very few words who communicates mostly through silence and the occasional coffee and breakfast run, and somehow this works.

The backstory that runs underneath everything in this series starts here in small pieces. Nadia’s cousin Amy was raped and murdered when Nadia was thirteen, and Nadia feels responsible. She got into policing because of it. Drew Aldridge, the man who killed Amy, was acquitted. Nadia was not allowed to testify at trial and she has never fully understood why, her recollection of events shifting slightly each time she revisits it. Jack notices quietly that she has been through something terrible even without knowing what it is, and that silent recognition is the foundation of everything between them.

The Case

A serial killer known as the Helter Skelter Killer has been making headlines, and the working theory from law enforcement is that the killer is a hitman. This is bad news for everyone in the profession since it dries up business fast. Jack, who is quietly funding this operation without telling Nadia, engineers a situation where she agrees to work with him to track the killer down.

Their team ends up being five people: Jack, Nadia, Evelyn, Felix, and Quinn. Evelyn was Jack’s original mentor and the one who initially found Nadia and sent Jack down to Canada to assess her. Jack reported back that she wasn’t worth pursuing, and then turned around and became her mentor himself. Evelyn does not appreciate this. She is bent out of sorts and knows everything about everyone, so she is constantly trying to figure out more about Nadia. Felix is the tech guy. Quinn is some kind of law enforcement, though exactly what kind is not yet confirmed.

The HSK killer is treating this like a game. He’s dropping hints to police and the FBI, planting fake DNA evidence suggesting a connection to Charles Manson, and generally having a very good time watching everyone scramble. When he discovers online that a group of hitmen are coming after him, he is genuinely offended, as if they have no right to be upset with him.

Jack and Nadia attend an opera where the killer has announced his next strike. The security is heavy. The killer is there anyway, spots Jack, recognizes him from their past, and the operation fails. Someone dies. Nadia is upset and Jack takes her back to the room, goes out for drinks instead of raiding the minibar, and Quinn shows up while he’s gone. They sit by the old pool, hold hands, almost kiss. Jack comes back and is visibly angry in the way of someone who absolutely has feelings he refuses to acknowledge.

Later, unable to sleep, Jack takes Nadia drunk shooting. They get properly trashed and have an actual good time together blowing off steam.

Evelyn’s Suspicion

Evelyn can see exactly what’s happening between Jack and Nadia and finally corners Jack about it. She tells him Quinn is not going to walk away and if Jack doesn’t do something about his feelings he’s going to spend a long time regretting it. He refuses. So she tells him fine, enjoy regretting it then. As we know he will.

The Trap and the Betrayal

The lead they’ve been chasing turns out to be someone Jack suspected from the beginning, a hitman Evelyn had quickly dismissed. That quick dismissal makes them suspicious of Evelyn’s motives, so they set a trap at her house using Nadia as bait to see what Evelyn does. The plan doesn’t go quite the way they expected because Evelyn had actually been worried about Jack, but the misunderstanding gets cleared up and Evelyn admits she made a genuine mistake dismissing their suspect. Hitmen can’t trust each other — what a surprise.

They bring in FBI agent DuBois, offering him the killer and the glory on the condition that once the HSK killer is caught, his history as a hitman stays buried. DuBois agrees and immediately disregards every condition of the arrangement. When the killer doesn’t show up on schedule, DuBois decides he’s going to arrest the hitmen instead since they’ve already admitted what they are. He sneaks into Nadia’s room while she appears to be sleeping. She wakes up quickly with a gun in her hand. His plan is foiled.

The killer, it turns out, has been in the house the whole time. He sets the gas off in the master bedroom fireplace. Nadia wakes just in time to get out. DuBois does not. After a long fight Nadia kills the Helter Skelter Killer, a man named Wilks, and comes out the other side badly hurt.

She and Quinn part ways. Since sharing phone numbers would be unwise, they create separate email accounts to stay in touch.

A Note on Reading Order

LD listened to these books out of order and would strongly recommend against that. Each book has its own self-contained case, but the underlying storylines — especially the mystery surrounding Nadia’s cousin Amy and what she actually witnessed and experienced that night — do not make as much sense out of order. Start here and read straight through.

Best Part of This Book

Jack and the drunk shooting scene. It’s amazing the way he notices Nadia has been through something terrible without needing to ask what it was.

Worst Part of This Book

The pacing in the first half. This is the slowest entry point in the series and it takes a while to get into the rhythm of it. Worth pushing through — but it’s worth acknowledging.

The Steam Rating Breakdown

🔥 — This is a thriller with zero romance. The tension between Jack and Nadia is real but nothing happens. A note on narration: the book switches to a separate male narrator for the killer’s POV sections. It’s intentionally unsettling and it works.

The Ending — Satisfied or Disappointed?

Mostly satisfied with how the case resolves. The Quinn ending is deliberately unresolved and it’s one of those things that makes more sense once you’ve read the whole series than it does in the moment.

Would I Reread It?

Yes.

Who Is This For

Readers who loved the Rockton series and want more Kelley Armstrong. Fans of thriller and crime fiction who want a genuinely complex female protagonist. Just know that book one is the hardest entry point in the series and it gets better from here.

Where to Get

📖 Physical Book
Amazon | Bookshop.org

🎧 Audiobook
Audible

📱 Ebook
Amazon

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Exit Strategy — Kelley Armstrong | A Full Spoiler Review