From Publishers Weekly
Unrelated murder cases plague Lincoln Prairie, Ill., police detective Marti MacAlister in her fifth outing (following Done Wrong, 1995). Elderly Sophie Admunds's demise looks accidental until the medical examiner's report finds oil on her shoes and a bruise more in keeping with a push than her fatal fall down the stairs. Her elder son, who had been pressuring her to sell her house, is the prime suspect. But as Marti and her acerbic partner, Vic Jessenovik, methodically investigate, another death echoes the first when the coroner assures them that the drowning of motel manager Liddy Fields was no accident. Treating the cases as separate, they are stunned when a link between the two victims emerges: both had been advocates of an abused child who had gone missing seven years earlier. Marti and Vic must follow up on the older case in order to solve the more recent murders. Bland pulls no punches in this tale as she bares the harrowing realities of child abuse for her readers.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Bland's Lincoln Prairie, Illinois, police detective Marti McAlister appears in her fifth case, still wrestling with the demands of job, family, and boyfriend. This time, the seemingly unrelated murders of two women stump Marti and her partner, Jessenovik, until they discover that both victims had a connection to an eight-year-old unsolved case concerning the disappearance of a young girl, a victim of child abuse by her father and brothers. When a retired teacher and a social worker who were involved with the old case are also murdered, suspicion begins to fall on the missing girl's surviving family. This series has previously dealt with the grim histories of other highly dysfunctional families. While Bland pulls no punches in describing the appalling human capacity for cruelty, she counterbalances the world's evil with the character of Marti, a woman who seeks justice rather than retribution and who will not let herself be robbed of her own capacity for love and caring because so many others lack it. A stellar installment in an excellent series.
Stuart Miller
