AUTHOR: Dee Henderson
DATE: 2016
PUBLISHER: Bethany House
STARS: ***1/2
Evie Blackwell loves her life as an Illinois State Police Detective . . . mostly. She's very skilled at investigations and has steadily moved up through the ranks. She would like to find Mr. Right, but she has a hard time imagining how marriage could work, considering the demands of her job.
Gabriel Thane is a lifetime resident of Carin County and now its sheriff, a job he loves. Gabe is committed to upholding the law and cares deeply for the residents he's sworn to protect. He too would like to find a lifetime companion, a marriage like his parents have. . . .
When Evie arrives in Carin, Illinois, it's to help launch a new task force dedicated to reexamining unsolved crimes across the state. Spearheading this trial run, Evie will work with the sheriff's department on a couple of its most troubling missing-persons cases. As she reexamines old evidence to pull out a few tenuous new leads, she unearths a surprising connection . . . possibly to a third cold case. Evie's determined to solve the cases before she leaves Carin County, and Sheriff Thane, along with his family, will be key to those answers.
Dee Henderson used to be one of my favorite authors because of her high-tension plotlines and realistic characters. In Traces of Guilt¸ the characters are quite compelling, but the action seemed to plod. Since Evie, Gabriel, and the others involved are investigating cold cases, it stands to reason that much research and digging would be required. I’m sure the descriptions of the procedures necessary to work a cold case are accurate, but this story included too much detail and repetition for my liking.
There were sections of high drama, and I did come to care about the Thanes and their friends/coworkers. For that reason, Traces of Guilt earns three and a half stars. Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc.