IN HER TRACKS

Returning to active duty, Seattle Detective Tracy Crosswhite gets shunted off to cold cases just in time for a fresh series of disappearances to spark her interest in a five-year-old kidnapping.

Now that she’s recovered from childbirth and PTSD, Tracy’s eager to resume her position in the Violent Crimes Section. But Detective Maria Fernandez, her temporary replacement in VCS, has nowhere else to go, so her slimy boss, Capt. Johnny Nolasco, invites Tracy to replace retiring Detective Art Nunzio as the one-person Cold Case Unit. Even though she’s been reassigned, Tracy’s old partner, Detective Kinsington Rowe, wants her to join him in working the disappearance of receptionist Stephanie Cole from a jogging path in North Park, near the places where two prostitutes nobody much cares about were last seen. Tracy agrees even as she’s getting invested in her first cold case, the vanishing of Elle Chin from a corn maze her father had taken her to during the weekly outing his estranged wife allowed him with her. “My counselor thinks I have an obsession to save young women,” says Tracy, and readers will see the counselor’s point even if they’re not familiar with Tracy’s previous history. Since Dugoni reveals early on that the three missing women are being held by Franklin Sprague and his two brothers, only two big questions remain: What’s the connection between Elle Chin’s kidnapping and the three present-tense abductions, and how many surprises can the author tease out of a setup that seems to have left no room for them? One of these questions is answered a lot more satisfyingly than the other.

A warmhearted procedural about some ice-cold crimes.