I had read Fallen Angel, number three in this series, last year. This one feels rougher than that one, and not as good a read. But first, a summary:

Hannah Thomas returns from a spa outing with a friend to find her fiance dead and her son missing. DI Gaby Darin and her team are called in to investigate. Could Hannah herself be the killer? Or is something from her past catching up with her?

There are bound to be some spoilery bits here, so consider yourself warned.

In book three, Darin is only an acting DI. Between then and now – in book four, I imagine, which I did not read – Darin has had “acting” dropped, and she’s now the boss for real, as it were, of her group. I find this a bit difficult, as Darin is not exactly the polished of stones: she is impuldive, curt, or even rude. She doesn’t seem to have any people skills or he ability to bridge the space between her crew and her superiors. I’ll give her a break on her relationship with Rusty, the medical examiner, because romantic relationships can be choppy waters, but she’s been mooning over him since book three, and I can’t help but think she would be better at this. Instead, she’s often snippy with him in a way that really puts a damper on things.

When Darin gets to the scene, she notes the dead guy (apparent suicide) says, “OK, missing kid.”, but there is zero urgency conveyed through this beginning, and crucial part of the investigation, either about the dead man or the missing child – a child who has a serious medical issue (type 1 diabetes, for which he wears an insulin pump. No frantic energy about searching nearby, in the event the kid was frightened by either the actions of the dead man, who is also a former cop, or by any other persons who might have been present. She doesn’t stay even a little while CSI starts going through the scene. She doesn’t pick up, it seems, that Hannah is not devastated by these events. All in all: she doesn’t seem to notice the things she should be, or doing/ordering the things that need to be done with quickness.

Since nothing is happening with urgency, it drags the rest of the book with it. There are far too many scenes where people are deciding what to have for dinner, or worrying about a colleague’s wedding. Far too much “X seemed like (something), but that wasn’t the case, here’s why: blah.” I don’t need a writer to tell me these things. I need them to show me these things, so as the characters go about their business, we can understand that Mal, for instance, generally doesn’t look like he’s paying attention, but actually is intensely focused.

Although, to be honest, nobody in this book but the villain seems to be laser focused on anything. I will give the book points for this: the villain doesn’t stand around opining on all the ways they set things up. They just say “it’s because of this thing” and then disappears, something I welcome.

This would keep you occupied on a plane or train or beach, but to me it’s a bi like cotton candy. Sure, you can eat it. But ultimately, it’s unsatisfying, and easily forgotten.

Two and a half stars, rounded down to two. I was disappointed in this, as I had expected things to get better, not worse, from the three stars I gave Fallen Angel.

Thanks to HQ Digital and NetGalley for the reading copy.

The Missing Piece is the nineteenth in a series, the lead character of which (as billed/titled, anyway) is Dismas Hardy. This book, however, features more of Abe Glitsky, a PI, and Wes Farrell, a former prosecutor, now defense attorney, who is having a midlife crisis about defending people he believes are guilty. According to some things I read, Lescroart cycles through characters, putting some (like Abe and Wes here) in the forefront, and then in the next book, putting others at the front. No problem with that!

I’ve not read any of the books in this series, and I don’t think it’s necessary to start at one and land here, as it’s fine as a standalone. There are enough details about the relationships between the characters that it easily works as a standalone.

Eleven years ago, Farrell prosecuted Paul Riley for the rape and murder of Dana Rush. The Exoneration Initiative, akin to the Innocence Project, finds new DNA evidence pointing to another man who was already in prison for the same crime. That man confessed to Dana’s murder, and Paul Riley is released. Paul heads home to live with his father. After Paul cleans up and remodels the room above the garage, his father decides Paul should start paying rent, at $2500/month. Thanks, dad. Since Paul doesn’t make much at the restaurant where he works – and certainly not enough to pay dear old dad’s price, he decides to go back to breaking and entering.

After one job, he’s back in his place, when his dad calls up to him. Paul thinks pops sounds a little off, so he shoves the loot under his pillow, opens the door, but it isn’t dad. Paul has an “Oh, shit” moment, but the person at the door shoots Paul in the head before he can do anything.

A couple of detectives show up, and Paul’s father tells them he saw the shooter: Doug Rush, the father of the girl Paul murdered. So, despite everything that screams bullshit about this – including dad’s attempt to say the money Paul has stuffed under his pillow belonging to him, the dad the scumbag – thee two just bop right over to Doug’s place. After asking him a couple of questions about where he’s been, and his refusal to tell them anything, they decide to go ahead and arrest him on the basis of Paul’s dad’s eyewitness. This is the dumbest thing in the book, given how notoriously unreliable eyewitnesses are. In any case, while getting the cuffs on Doug, one of the detectives, who clearly has some issues, beats him. Of course someone captures it on video. Doug makes a call to a detective that worked his daughter’s case,who in turn calls Farrell: Doug wants Farrell as his lawyer.

Farrell agrees to represent Doug, even though he thinks Doug is guilty. He manages to get Doug out on bail, though, then goes back to his life, talking to multiple people about his existential crisis. When Doug doesn’t appear in court when he’s supposed to, Farrell immediately goes to” guilty, he’s a runner.

But Doug turns up dead, and not by suicide. Farrell now feels guilty, talks to Hardy, and in comes Abe, to poke around at what happened, as they feel they owe it to Doug.

From there, we get a real investigation, instead of whatever the hell the detectives who arrested Doug were doing (they were suspended shortly after arresting him). Abe finds Doug did indeed have an alibi for the time Paul was shot, but it wasn’t something Doug wanted to reveal, in order to protect someone. Then yet another body shows up, and Abe dogs the case until he discovers that missing piece.

Although there is some time devoted to Farrell and his issues with working defense instead of offense, those moments don’t drag the book down. Since I’m a weather nerd, I didn’t mind the descriptions of that throughout the book. The main characters are well developed by now, of course, and they all act like real, actual people. The story itself raises questions about how possible criminals are treated, how new testing that wasn’t available years ago shows innocent people have been locked up, and what justice means or should be. The missing piece, to me, had a bit of luck involved, but sometimes, you do get lucky.

Four and a half stars, rounded up to five.

Thanks to Atria Books and NetGalley for the reading copy.

Novelist Andy Drake returns to his old neighborhood to care for his dad, who is in the beginning stages of dementia. Also living in the neighborhood is his not so secret crush, Rachel, who is now married to an emotionally abusive man and has two kids.

A quick kiss at a cookout at Rachel’s spirals into something more. Until someone leaves a note in Andy’s door, telling him to knock it off, or else. Our first mystery: who left the note? The guy with the tiny dog, who no one seems to know anything about? An older lady, on her own, who likes to sit outside with her binoculars? Rachel’s husband David?

Several weeks later, Rachel’s husband is shot dead, and Rachel and the kids have disappeared. Andy, not currently working on the book that’s due to his editor, instead starts chasing up clues, and nearly gets himself shot in the process after breaking in to Rachel’s house, looking for anything that might indicate what her husband was up to or where she and the kids might be.

From details Andy’s able to glean, it seems David’s business isn’t doing as well as it appears – and David’s partner in the business has committed suicide, it seems.

After finding a business card in the house, he dithers a bit until he calls the number and says what appears to be a code word. After the other side hangs up, Andy thinks he’s on to something: did David owe these people money? Were they capable of killing David? When Andy gets a late night visit from a stranger he deems the Visitor, he knows the answer is yes. But the visitor insists they didn’t do it, and it’s believable, both to Andy and the reader.

Andy continues to go down the rabbit hole, eventually coming out the other side. There’s quite a nice twist at the end that was not telegraphed from chapters away, and it was a nice touch that made sense of things.

My only issue was with the beginning and some of the chapters that were more stream of consciousness than narrative. I get why they’re there, as it was the easiest way to get certain information into the book without having them be full-fledged narrative parts, but I wasn’t a fan.

Other than that, however, I enjoyed it quite a lot, and I believe readers who are used to tight neighborhoods or small towns especially will as well.

A solid four out of five star read.

Thanks to Thomas & mercer and NetGalley for the review copy.

Some time ago, I tried to read Thin Air, by this same author. I gave up on it because it had one of my most hated things – a road atlas-worthy description of someone driving, for no good reason (i.e., it added nothing to the story) – and because there were a multitude of UK Englishisms that threw one out of the story (hand brake, “that lot”, etc.).

I am very happy I took another chance on Lisa Gray, because Lonely Hearts has none of that: it’s a taut, well-told story about a serial killer, a missing woman, a dead wife, and relatives rightly pissed off at several books that seem to only be written to line the pockets of the author at their expense.

We start off in 1989, with underaged Devin Palmer waiting for her sister Erika. The plan: to have a couple of drinks, and then for Devin to stay the night at Erika’s. Alas, Erika ghosts her sister and spends the night with her boyfriend. Also, alas, Devin – a slightly built redhead with fair skin – is offered a ride home with Travis Dean Ford, AKA the Valley Strangler, so named because he strangles slight, redheaded women who have fair skin with their own pantyhose.

We then go to Christine and Veronica, looking at a pamphlet for the Lonely Hearts Club, a way for people outside to write to people locked up in prison. Veronica writes to Travis Dean Ford, and eventually winds up in a “relationship”, or as much as one can have with someone on death row.

Flash forward, and we’re with Jessica, trawling through trash bags, hoping to find evidence of a man’s infidelity. While she’s doing this, Christen Ryan walks up to her, asking her to find an old friend, Veronica Lowe, and her daughter Mia – Travis Dean Ford’s daughter, that he had with Veronica somehow.

Jessica takes the case, working it alone without much contact with Connor. It seems somewhere between book one, which I did not finish, and the end of book three, they apparently hooked up. But he’s now seeing an exotic dancer, and Jessica is avoiding him.

It isn’t easy to track down someone who willfully vanishes. But Christine gives Jessica quite a lot of information, including a couple of photos. Christine says it’s very important to track Veronica down, because Ford’s wife has been murdered in her own home. Struck on the head, then strangled with pantyhose. Interestingly, Detectives Pryce and Medina find they are not Jordana’s: they were brought to the scene by the killer, deliberately. Copycat?

As we go along, bouncing between timelines and POVs, the mystery becomes ever deeper. Jessica continues to track Veronica, talks to the owner of TLHC business, her husband (who tells Jessica to stop looking for Veronica), several witnesses, trawls through newspaper archives and signs up for TLHC so she can get into the forum and research there, as well.

By now it’s fairly clear that Veronica doesn’t want to be found. We then get several chapters from Jordana interspersed, plugging her book at a bookstore, and feeling as if someone has been following her.

Meanwhile, Jessica helps out Pryce by providing what she’s found, and she’s now on the scent, which leads to another location entirely. It’s just before the end that we get Jordana’s last POV chapter, and then the end is rushing at us.

Although I figured out the killer fairly early, it was still a very good read, capturing not just the characters of Jessica and the people immediately around her, but also the families who suffered at the hand of Travis Dean Ford. One character – the father of one of the victims – complains bitterly to Pryce and Medina that they don’t know the names of the 15 girls and women Ford killed. They only know Ford’s name. I thought that an astute observation.

There are no laggy parts, and there isn’t anything that rips the reader out of the world Gray has built. The plot is sensible, and no one does anything that is out of character. I’m glad I took the chance on the series again.

A five star read.

Thanks to Amazon UK and NetGalley for the reading copy.

Hudson Miller, part-time bouncer and currently suspended boxer (for hitting an opponent’s corner man after a bout, causing the man to fall through the ropes and onto the apron around the ring), fails to answer not one, but two calls from his estranged father one night. The next morning, he receives a call he does answer: from a detective, telling Hudson that his father has been murdered – one shot to the back of his head.

Miller returns to his small town, determines what the cops know (nothing), visits his stepmother (useless), calls his mother (sad), then goes back to the big city. Things change, though, when his father’s will is read: he left Hudson three rental properties and his salvage yard operation, none of which are anything Hudson knows anything about. He also inherits his father’s helper at the yard, Charlie, an old Vietnam vet, and the proverbial junkyard dog, Buster.

Frustrated with police, and lacking a steady job, Hudson decides to move back to the town, living in the empty rental and figuring out how to run the yard, and starts digging around in the mystery surrounding his father’s death. The police do come up with something, though: guns. Stored in a vault under a fake floor, it appears Hudson’s father was involved in gunrunning. Hudson, for his part, thinks it possible his father would be involved in that, because his father wasn’t exactly a pillar of good deeds.

One night, Buster starts barking and digging at something under one of the cars. Charlie and Hudson manage to drag him away, move the junked car, and discover another car: buried. When they unearth the crushed car, there’ a dead body in the trunk. While Hudson thinks his old man could have been involved in guns, he doesn’t think his father was a murderer.

With the yard shut down while the police do their thing, Hudson returns to the city to do a few shifts at the bar. One evening, he gets a call to turn on the TV. The news has broken not just about the body in the car, but the young man’s name. The story goes on to mention the salvage yard. Hudson, now tremendously mad, goes to the police station and asks the detective what is going on?

The detective points out the mother and sister of the young man, Mo Reyes, are right there in the front of the office. Hudson calms himself and leaves, but not before Reyes’ sister Lucy puts a dent in the hood of his Jeep.

Lucy shows up at the yard, and instantly becomes the leader of the very small group: following her lead, both men assist in gathering information about what happened to Reyes, which in turn would help them with Hudson’s father’s murder.

15-year old Lucy has a couple of instances of not quite believable behavior: she takes an Uber to confront a man who was arrested smuggling guns, only to be bailed out by Hudson and Charlie, for one.

At the end, though, they’ve followed the trails, collected the clues, and formed a scenario of how these events transpired, and who the killer must be.

It’s a good read, without any real slow pieces, and the only infodump is from someone they’ve confronted about Reyes’ death – no ding for that. Beyond Lucy being a tad too impetuous, the characters are excellently drawn.

Four and a half out of five stars, rounded up to five.

Thanks to Crooked Lane Books and NetGalley for the reading copy.