In Her Tracks
In Her Tracks (Tracy Crosswhite, #8)
By: Robert Dugoni
“I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that walking out that door, leaving these cases unsolved, will be both the hardest and the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Why the hardest?”
“Because I always believe I’m one phone call, one DNA hit away from solving another case.”
“And why the easiest?”
“Because I’m tired of lying to myself.”
Another installment of Robert Dugoni’s Tracy Crosswhite series, of which I’ve read #1 (unreviewed) and #7. Tracy Crosswhite is a great character and I love how we get to see her be a mom and wife and a BA detective.
Coming off of the last book, Tracy had to take some time off work from the trauma. Upon her return to work she finds herself out of her A team detective job and relegated to the Cold Case department. Not one to give up or give in, she accepts the less-than-desirable lot she has been given by her captain/nemesis and dives all in.
We end up with a multi-level plot as Tracy re-opens a cold case file on an abducted little girl, the files of two abducted prostitutes, and, due to low personnel, joins her friend Kins on an active missing person’s case—a young female runner.
Will Tracy’s new job description keep her away from the action? Can she overcome the hopelessness of closed case files? Is she really just one phone call away from solving another case, or is it a self-concocted lie to boost morale?
One of Tracy’s defining characteristics is her life obsession with saving young girls the way she couldn’t do for her sister (see book one- My Sister’s Grave). Looking at her cases’ victims, we see that theme playing out again in this book. But her passion and drive, inspired by her sister’s death, is what makes her such a good detective.
A typical police procedural book, we follow Tracy on her clue-finding, question-asking, gut-following, deduction-making investigations. To my pleasant surprise, what seems to be pretty straightforward at the beginning, became a lot more convoluted than I expected by the time I was halfway through the book.
I will say, the book begins with the child’s abduction, but the majority of the book focuses more on the active missing person’s case. The child abduction case is not forgotten by any means, it just isn’t the prominent thread like you would think with it being the opening scene.
I thought this was a great book and I read it pretty fast. If you’ve never read a Tracy Crosswhite book, I would recommend starting at the beginning. If you’re already a fan, this one will be reminiscent of the previous books, offering a page-turning mystery with likable characters, a little humor, and a relatively clean bill of content.
I’ve read several from Dugoni’s series, and I’ve found I really like his books. You can check out his David Sloane series (unreviewed so far) and his Charles Jenkins series as well. Both I would recommend.
One other side note: Dugoni included a blurb in the back of the book indicating that this book was written during the Covid-19 quarantine. He said he received numerous emails from readers thanking him for allowing them to “escape their homes and the difficulties and loneliness they were enduring.” He chose not to include the Covid pandemic in this novel because he believes the primary purpose of a novel is to “entertain.” And I agree! I think there are a lot of us who are tired of hearing about Covid. We don’t want to have to read it in our novels too! I appreciated this sentiment to maintain some normalcy and escapism in his novels in this sense.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
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