Innocence Road
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Detective Leanne Everhart swore she’d never go back to her hometown near Marfa, Texas—but she returns when her brother needs her, only to find a town in need too, still torn apart by a decades-old crime.
Leanne Everhart knows women have something to fear in her artsy hometown, especially so if they’re not rich, white locals. Returning to town after her father’s death, she sees the ugliest sides of an area that draws people for its severe, untamed natural landscape.
While her department faces mounting backlash over a recent wrongful conviction in the long-ago murder case of a popular local teenager—which is now unsolved—Leanne is called to a fresh crime scene at the edge of the desert. A nameless woman was found murdered, with no clues as to her identity. As Leanne digs into the crime scene evidence, she grows convinced this latest murder case is linked with the local teenager’s murder. And to multiple cold cases, all unnamed female victims, that have all been shelved by her department without leads.
Now, with conflicted loyalties and without allies, Leanne must hunt down a serial killer, one who’s been preying on local women for two decades, growing bolder and more ruthless with every strike.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Second-generation cop Leanne Everhart rues the day she let familial duty drag her back to stifling Madrone, Tex., in the suspenseful if somewhat wobbly latest from bestseller Griffin (Liar's Point). Journalists descend on the Madrone Police Department after a high-profile murder conviction is overturned on the grounds of a coerced confession. Then Leanne finds a young Jane Doe dead on the outskirts of town, a case that police chief Jim McBride makes clear he wants buried in light of the ongoing media firestorm. But Leanne's consult with forensic anthropologist Dr. Jennifer Sayers turns out to be a game changer: not only does the crime scene contain a second person's bones, but over the past nine years, Sayers has identified remains from four other female victims with similar injuries. As Leanne scrambles to solve the case without alerting McBride—in part by wheedling favors from her ex, now with the local sheriff's department, and her longtime friend, FBI agent Sam Carver—Griffin's twisty tale accelerates at a satisfying clip. Unfortunately, some of the secondary characters and subplots (including one about Leanne's drug-addicted brother) are underbaked. Still, this atmospheric page-turner starring a complex detective is engrossing enough to deserve a sequel.
