John Hart is a damn good author! The fact that he won back to back Edgar Awards, the only author to do so, should have clued me in, but now after having read two of his books, I know I must read them all!  He can create a sense of place and community and develop his characters within that framework so that it almost feels that you know these people and the town they live in. Additionally, he seems to have an innate ability to create suspense and urgency by including twists and turns in his story line that keep you turning the pages late into the night.

The newspaper headlines said it all: Hero Cop or Angel of Death?  Elizabeth Black knew that she was in trouble and that this time it wouldn’t be easy to get out of it.  But at least Channing, the teenage girl she had saved from that dungeon was now safe, and the men who had held her there were gone. As a cop that was all that mattered to Elizabeth but now there were allegations of police misconduct because the men had been shot eighteen times. The timeline that Elizabeth had provided the cops hadn’t quite lined up with the evidence, and Channing was being an uncooperative witness. Elizabeth wondered whether this time she might have hit the wall and end up in jail.

Cops did go to jail. Adrian Wall had been a cop and now after thirteen years in prison he was going to get out. He had been Elizabeth’s mentor but something went wrong and he was charged and found guilty of murdering a local woman with whom he was having an affair. Elizabeth could never quite believe that he had done it. Over the years she had picked at the case, but she could never quite get a hold of anything that would exonerate him and that bothered her.

But even before Adrian gets into town after having been released from prison, someone tries to kill him, and then a serial killer strikes again. As the various strands seem to intertwine Elizabeth discovers  that she is caught up in something much more sinister that she could ever imagine, distorting everything she knows about herself, her family, the police department and her town.

Brenda’s Rating: ***** ( 5 out of 5 Stars)

Recommend this book to: Sharon, Marian and Keith

Books study worthy: Yes

Read in ebook format.