Wednesday, 24 April 2024

New Book - A Cold Trail - Tracy Crosswhite 7 - by Robert Dugoni (Pages 1 - 85)


 First Published: 2020

In the last book in the series Tracy and Dan became parents of a baby girl they called Daniella. Now two months later Tracy and Dan have returned to their home town while their home in Seattle is being refurbished.

The prologue of the book takes place in 1993 and a girl Heather Johansen is walking, apparently fleeing from someone. She told her parents that she was staying with her friend, Kimberly, so she can't return home or go to her friend, fearing she may put her and her parents in a difficult position. Then she remembers Sarah Crosswhite from her class and her father, and she decides to go to them. However, a car stops and the man who she is fleeing from stops, and she panics but he catches up with her and hits her.

The novel moves to present day. Tracy is now on maternity leave, and she and Dan have hired a nanny, Theresa. Dan has a case in the village, as the mayor, Gary Witherspoon, is buying out the old business in the main street, but there is one who refuses. That is Larry Kauffman, who has hired Dan.

Tracy goes to visit Roy Calloway, the old chief of the police. He is supposed to have retired, but the new chief, Finlay Armstrong, is in compassionate leave as his wife, Kimberley, died in a fire. Now Roy tells Tracy that the fire seems to have been intentional, and Kimberley's death is linked to that of Heather Johansen so many years ago. Roy says that Kimberley was writing a book about the death of her friend. And Roy knows of another suspicious death which may be connected. Heather's parents hired a lawyer, Jason Matthews, who died in a supposedly hunting accident, but Roy thinks that there was something suspicious about his death as well. Roy wants Tracy to help him, and she tells him that she needs to notify her office in Seattle and talk to Dan.

That night Tracy talks to Dan, but he doesn't want her to get involved. Yet, she has already made up her mind. That night Tracy reads Sarah's journal, and she discovers that her sister wrote about Heather's death, and in the journal she said that there were rumours that she was pregnant. Tracy knows that Heather had gone out with Finlay, the new chief of police, but when she left him, he stalked her, and the Johansens had to report him. As a consequence, he left town to study.  That means that Finlay was not in the town when Heather was murdered.

Like usual in the series, we have a very powerful and intriguing plot. 

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New Book - Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (Chapters 1 - 2)

 First Published: 1814 This is a book by Jane Austen which I have never read.