WHAT YOU WANT TO SEE

A routine case pulls a private eye into the criminal world when the woman she’s been following is suddenly murdered.

People who show up out of the blue at Roxane Weary’s door rarely bring good news, so she doesn’t expect much from her former lover Tom and his colleague Detective Sanko. They’re looking for information on Marin Strasser, who just so happens to have been Roxane’s most recent job. Marin’s fiance, Arthur Ungless, hired Roxane to tail her for a few days because he feared she was having an affair before they were even married. Roxane didn’t think much about the time she spent watching Marin shop and wander around town—the subject seemed too disconnected from anyone to be having an affair or even a casual friendship—but she didn’t mind billing Arthur. When Roxane and Arthur met to discuss the case, he insisted even more strongly on the need to follow Marin but couldn’t produce the money he’d promised Roxane in the first place. Again, Roxane thought little of it until Tom and Sanko inform her that Marin’s been shot and killed and that whatever information Roxane has could be the key to finding her killer. Though not strongly invested, Roxane, feeling for Arthur, does a little digging of her own, uncovering what appears to be a secret life or two in Marin’s past. Who was Marin Strasser after all? Roxane doesn’t try to mix her own personal life with her work apart from her friendship with Shelby, a teen whose life she saved in more ways than one (The Last Place You Look, 2017). But the more closely Roxane investigates Marin, the more whatever danger Marin was involved in threatens to leach into Roxane’s life and put her loved ones in peril.

This book doesn't have the dark creepiness that made Lepionka's series opener successful, but her characterization of her heroine’s interpersonal relationships remains spot-on.