The 9th Girl focuses on the ninth unidentified body to turn up in Minneapolis in 2012, nicknamed Jane Doe 9. When Kovac and Liska take on the case, they discover a shocking fact: This victim has been found without any identifiable characteristics, except for those that peg her as an adolescent girl. Before the investigation is through, the case will take the two detectives deep into the life and death of a teenage girl who wanted nothing more than to be 'normal.' They will come perilously close to the bullies who tormented her, the twisted family dynamics that may have contributed to her death, and ultimately to the haunting details of a young love that just may hide the secret of Jane Doe 9's terrible fate. Hoag's most recent books have been among the biggest bestsellers of her career; with the return of Kovac and Liska, The 9th Girl is destined to be a megahit.

On a frigid New Year's Eve in Minneapolis a young woman's brutalized body falls from the trunk of a car into the path of oncoming traffic. Questions as to whether she was alive or dead when she hit the icy pavement result in her macabre nickname, Zombie Doe. Unidentified and unidentifiable, she is the ninth nameless female victim of the year, and homicide detectives Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska are charged with the task of not only finding out who Zombie Doe is, but who in her life hated her enough to destroy her. Was it personal, or could it just have been a crime of opportunity? Their greatest fear is that not only is she their ninth Jane Doe of the year, but that she may be the ninth victim of a vicious transient serial killer they have come to call Doc Holiday. Crisscrossing America's heartland, Doc Holiday chooses his victims at random, snatching them in one city and leaving them in another, always on a holiday. If Zombie Doe is one of his, he has brought his gruesome game to a new and more terrifying level. But as Kovac and Liska begin to uncover the truth, they will find that the monsters in their ninth girl's life may have lived closer to home. And even as another young woman disappears, they have to ask the question: which is the greater evil--the devil you know or the devil you don't?