The Trapped Girl by Robert Dugoni

When a woman’s body is discovered submerged in a crab pot in the chilly waters of Puget Sound, Detective Tracy Crosswhite finds herself with a tough case to untangle. Before they can identify the killer, Tracy and her colleagues on the Seattle PD’s Violent Crimes Section must figure out who the victim is. Her autopsy, however, reveals she may have gone to great lengths to conceal her identity. So who was she running from?

After evidence surfaces that their Jane Doe may be a woman who suspiciously disappeared months earlier, Tracy is once again haunted by the memory of her sister’s unsolved murder. Dredging up details from the woman’s past leads to conflicting clues that only seem to muddy the investigation. As Tracy begins to uncover a twisted tale of brutal betrayal and desperate greed, she’ll find herself risking everything to confront a killer who won’t go down without a deadly fight.

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I’m a fan of Robert Dugoni’s books, having discovered him through NetGalley.

I like his writing style. His books seem to have a bit of substance – a good balance of scene setting, characters, dialogue and importantly, as far as I am concerned, a well-written, entertaining story. This one is no exception.

The Trapped Girl is the fourth book in the Tracy Crosswhite series. Tracy is a strong character, a homicide detective in the Seattle Police Department and she leads a good team. In the previous books, she’s had problems with her boss, Captain Johnny Nolasco. They really don’t like each other and in the past he has made life difficult for Tracy but this time round, we see a slightly softer, more mature side to Tracy and while she is still disagreeing with her boss, she’s trying a different approach. Her personal life also seems more settled.

Tracy and her colleague Kins are called out to a body found near Cormorant Cove, not far from Tracy’s home. A high school student who is out crabbing illegally in Puget Sound caught more than he bargained for when he pulled up a crab pot with a young woman’s body in it. It turned out the victim had facial implants of the kind to change her appearance and by tracing the serial numbers to the manufacturer, eventually got a name from the plastic surgeon who had carried out the procedure – but little else. Lynn Hoff had paid in cash, and had requested that she be given all the photographs taken.

Further investigation leads them to believe Lynn Hoff did not want to be found and had never been reported as missing. No history, a fake social security number, no employment, no phone, nothing.

But then the story takes another twist. Tracy obtains Lynn Hoff’s drivers licence and the photo is passed around. She is contacted by a ranger based in Mount Rainier National Park. He believes the woman is someone who went missing, presumed dead, in unusual circumstances on the mountain, except he says her name is Andrea Strickland.

Just as Tracy’s team are starting to get somewhere, they are ordered to hand the case over to Pierce County who had investigated Andrea Strickland’s disappearance from Mount Rainier. Tracy wasn’t happy about this particularly since she considered their detective, Stan Fields, had carried out a pretty sloppy investigation into the circumstances surrounding Andrea Strickland’s disappearance. So of course Tracy being Tracy, she carries on investigating (just a little) after complying with the order to hand over the case.

Some of the chapters in the book are in the voice of Andrea Strickland (in journal form) so you get a lot of background as to what was happening with her work, her marriage, her husband, her friends, a few months earlier, all adding to the mystery and throwing up possible suspects.

It’s a complex plot but written so well that it is not difficult to follow. There are great twists and turns. I thought I had sussed it out, but I didn’t get it quite right. For a while it looked like I was going to be close, but then there was another twist. Wonderful stuff. Definitely a page-turner.

Although The Trapped Girl is fourth in a series, it can be read as a stand-alone.

My thanks to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for providing an ARC.

Author’s website:  www.robertdugoni.com.

The 7th Canon – Robert Dugoni

In San Francisco’s seamy Tenderloin district, a teenage street hustler has been murdered in a shelter for boys. And the dedicated priest who runs the struggling home stands accused. But despite damning evidence that he’s a killer—and worse—Father Thomas Martin stands by his innocence. And attorney Peter Donley stands with him.

For three years Donley has cut his legal teeth in his uncle’s tiny, no-frills firm, where people come before profits. Just as Donley is poised to move on to a lucrative dream job, the shocking case lands in his lap, and he must put his future on hold while putting his courtroom skills to the test. But a ruthless DA seeking headlines and a brutal homicide cop bent on vengeance have their own agendas. Now, as he unearths the dirty secrets surrounding the case, Donley must risk his neck to save his client’s life…and expose the face of true evil.

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I’ve been a fan of Robert Dugoni since I read the first Tracy Crosswhite novel (well actually I read the second one first but have since read the other two) I love his style of writing, his characters and the good storytelling.

The 7th Cannon is a little bit different. It is set in 1980s San Francisco.

Peter Donley is a young lawyer who has been working for his uncle’s firm for three years. The office is situated in the Tenderloin district of the city not far from the Court. It’s a very run down area and his uncle often doesn’t charge his poorer clients. Peter, who has a wife and child, is on the brink of leaving to start a more lucrative job. However his uncle is also the lawyer for the Archdiocese so when a teenage male prostitute is found dead in a Shelter for boys, Father Thomas Martin who runs the shelter, is charged with murder and the Archbishop brings the case to Peter’s Uncle Lou.

Peter is very much thrown in at the deep end when his uncle suffers a heart attack and is hospitalised. In these circumstances (defending someone accused of murder) it would probably be expected that Peter would pass the case on to a more experienced lawyer. However after a court appearance, he is officially becomes the priest’s lawyer. Of course the priest says he didn’t commit the crime despite the evidence obtained at the crime scene.

There seems to be something not quite right with the case from the start It’s as if someone is trying to rush the case through the Court before the defence can make their own enquiries. Is someone from high up pulling strings? Has evidence been planted or tampered with? Any potential witnesses (the boys within the shelter that night) had slipped back out onto the streets before they could be questioned by the Police. It is clear from the start that the detective who arrested Father Martin is violent and threatening but he is an interesting character with a back story.

The fact that the book is set in 1980s San Francisco in the seedy, run down Tenderloin District adds to the atmosphere.

I like the Peter character. He’s had a difficult upbringing and he’s had to look out for himself and grab his chances. His past still affects him. He has issues. He’s quite stubborn and tenacious. He doesn’t always make the right decisions but he’s a good character. There is a bit of depth to him and we do get to know a bit about his past.

This is a juicy crime/legal thriller which opens with quite a humorous court scene involving a parrot which gives us a glimpse of Peter Donley’s character and style then switches to the Boys Shelter where Father Thomas Martin is getting ready to lock up for the night. From then on it’s a rollercoaster of a tale that kept me entertained (and engrossed) right to the end….. and yes, it was one of those books that kept me reading until the early hours of the morning. Excellent storytelling!

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a digital review copy.

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The 7th Canon was published on 27 September 2016.  For reasons I won’t bore you with, I missed the fact I hadn’t published this post.  The good news is, if you are already a fan of Robert’s  the fourth book in the Tracey Crosswhite series, The Trapped Girl  is due out on 24 January 2017 – so not too long to wait!

In The Clearing – Robert Dugoni

 

Description:  Detective Tracy Crosswhite has a skill, and a soft spot, for tackling unsolved crimes. Having lost her own sister to murder at a young age, Tracy has dedicated her career to bringing justice and closure to the families and friends of victims of crime.

So when Jenny, a former police academy classmate and protégé, asks Tracy to help solve a cold case that involves the suspicious suicide of a Native American high school girl forty years earlier, Tracy agrees. Following up on evidence Jenny’s detective father collected when he was the investigating deputy, Tracy probes one small town’s memory and finds dark, well-concealed secrets hidden within the community’s fabric. Can Tracy uphold the promise she’s made to the dead girl’s family and deliver the truth of what happened to their daughter? Or will she become the next victim?

In The Clearing is the third book in the Tracy Crosswhite series. I stumbled across the second book in the series Her Final Breath last year and enjoyed it so much I then had to read the first book My Sister’s Grave.

In the Clearing has two main threads.  A murder investigation in Seattle (where Tracy is normally based) which seems like a domestic and the 40 year old case in Stoneridge that her friend Jenny asks her to look at. Tracy’s skill seems to be tackling unsolved, older crimes. Although Stoneridge is out of Tracy’s jurisdiction, her friend Jenny wanted an independent assessment of the file in case it had to be officially re-opened. Tracy manages to get permission to investigate from her boss Nolasco on condition she does it in her own time. Luckily she was owed time off and returned to Stoneridge.

As she delves deeper into the case it looks like the town has its share of secrets and possible cover ups. Some people really don’t want anyone to look too closely at the case or have it re-opened. She enlists the help of experts who have access to modern forensics methods.

There were a few twists and turns along the way and the ending wasn’t quite what I expected.

I like Tracy.  She’s hard working, fairly straightforward and tenacious when seeking clues. She takes some risks but I don’t think she’s one for flaunting the rules.  She has a love interest lawyer Dan O’Leary but he only appears briefly in this book.

Tracy’s boss, Captain Johnny Nolasco, doesn’t like Tracy. In fact there’s no love lost between them.  In this book Nolasco seems much more subdued (all part of the story) but I kind of missed the dynamic that was between them in the previous two books.  If you haven’t read the first two books then that doesn’t make any difference.  Each of the books can stand alone but some characters appear in all the books, all with a role to play.

Robert Dugoni has a good writing style – easy to read but a complex enough plot to be a satisfying read.  I love the procedural and forensic detail we get from him. It’s easily understandable and never too complicated or boring. There are a few twists and turns along the way and the ending wasn’t quite what I expected.

This is another of those books where I just had to stay up late to finish it.

Author’s website:   robertdugoni.com