Down the Broken Road
A Rachel Carver Mystery
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Fans of J. T. Ellison and Tami Hoag will find a new favorite in J. R. Backlund’s second installment of the Rachel Carver mysteries.
Ex-SBI agent Rachel Carver’s past comes back to haunt her as she uncovers a trail of murderous revenge—and a horrifying secret.
Rachel Carver’s career with the North Carolina Bureau of Investigation came to a shuddering halt after her last case led to the collateral death of an innocent woman and a shameful cover-up by her superiors. She’s turned in her badge and is settling in to a new life as a legal investigator—but Rachel’s past won’t leave her alone.
An anonymous tip leads her to investigate a possible link between a recent grizzly murder and the case that ruined her career. With a new set of clues to run down, Rachel is determined to uncover the truth once and for all. But the killer strikes again, and in a flurry of confusion, Rachel gets pinned for a double homicide.
On the run and desperate for answers, she peels back the layers of the victims’ lives—and discovers a shocking litany of murder and lies that now threatens to claim even more victims. Even if Rachel can prove her innocence, she might not be able to save her own life in Down the Broken Road, the second pulse-pounding novel in J. R. Backlund’s Rachel Carver mysteries.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Backlund's disappointing sequel to 2017's Among the Dead finds former North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation special agent Rachel Carver, who quit the SBI after she shot and killed a murder suspect, Lauren Bailey, in self-defense, searching for work as a private investigator. A call from a Siler City detective interrupts Carver's job search: her friend Bryce Parker, a Raleigh Herald reporter, is in the hospital recovering from a near-fatal heroin overdose. Someone kidnapped Parker, she learns, and injected him with the drug. Related events involving drugs, a recovery center, a scandalous affair, and a growing body count follow, all weighed down by increasingly flat prose. Meanwhile, Carver discovers a link between the deaths of Bailey and her former boyfriend, platoon leader Sgt. Tyler Larson, with a military cover-up in Afghanistan. Backlund supplies a surfeit of forgettable supporting characters, but readers who admire strong female leads will want to see more of the intriguing Carver.
