{"id":40514,"date":"2026-06-14T17:39:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T17:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lesbianfunworld.com\/books\/?p=40514"},"modified":"2026-06-14T17:39:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T17:39:12","slug":"the-acquittal-by-anne-laughlin-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesbianfunworld.com\/books\/the-acquittal-by-anne-laughlin-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Acquittal by Anne Laughlin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\r\n\r\nLauren 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\u2014not Lauren herself, which is telling\u2014wants to know what actually happened.\n\n\n\n\n\nJosie 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.\n\n\n\n\n\nFinding 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.\n\n\n\n\n\nLaughlin builds a procedural around two women who start as enemies\u2014Josie suspicious, Lauren evasive\u2014and 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.\n\n\n\n\n\nChicago moves through the book with specificity\u2014the 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.\n\n\n\n\n\nTwo women looking for answers. One victim. Two hostages. No separation between the professional and the personal once the pressure starts applying.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n
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