Lauren Wade was acquitted. The jury said not guilty. But acquittal isn’t the same as innocence, and the woman who hired Josie Harper to investigate—not Lauren herself, which is telling—wants to know what actually happened.
Josie is a former Chicago cop rebuilding a reputation that got destroyed in ways the case won’t let her forget. She carries that history like weight. The assignment is supposed to be straightforward detective work. It gets worse immediately: Lauren’s parents are kidnapped. The ransom demand is astronomical. Lauren’s trial burned through her money. She can’t pay.
Finding whoever actually killed Lauren’s lover becomes the same problem as finding two hostages. The threads connect. The timeline matters. The money matters. What Lauren did or didn’t do matters.
Laughlin builds a procedural around two women who start as enemies—Josie suspicious, Lauren evasive—and discover under pressure that they function together. In the field, they understand each other’s instincts. Under pressure, something else develops. The attraction is there but it’s not separate from the work. It’s woven through it.
Chicago moves through the book with specificity—the neighborhoods, the geography, the way the city’s architecture shapes investigation. Laughlin knows this place. It shows in the details that accumulate, in the way the city becomes more than backdrop. It becomes part of how the case unfolds.
Two women looking for answers. One victim. Two hostages. No separation between the professional and the personal once the pressure starts applying.
Details
| ISBN: 9781978665897 |
| Subtitle: |
| Genre: Mystery |
| Subject(s): LGBTQ+ Books; Mysteries & Thrillers; Mystery; Mystery, Thriller & Suspense; Women Sleuths |
| Publication Date: 2019-12-03 |
| Original Publication Date: |
| Publisher: Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio |
| Language: English |
| Format: audioCD |
| Pages: |
| Rating: |
| Notes: Anne Laughlin is a established crime fiction author with a Wikipedia entry. She is also the author of the Nell Swansen series and several standalone lesbian novels. |
| Book_ID: 106046 |