Review by Booklist Review
This sequel to Gone for Good (2021) again pits Chicago detective Annalisa Vega against fellow cops who demand blind loyalty to the thin blue line. After turning her brother and ex-cop father in for murder, Vega is burdened with the dual identities of genius cold-case detective and traitor. Here, she and her partner, Nick Carelli (also her ex-husband), are investigating the murder of a retired super-cop, Leo Hammond. Hammond's swaggering cowboy-cop history makes the suspect list crowded: his current wife, survivors of an on-duty shooting, the cold-case murder suspect he harassed, and his humiliated ex-wife all have solid motives. When Annalisa realizes that the suspect Hammond harassed, Moe Bocks, is dating her sister-in-law, protective instincts put him at the top of her list even as Hammond's former partners are targeted. But, are the cases even connected? Vega's ruptured family, growing feelings for Nick, and her self-sabotaging tendencies provide plenty of interest beyond her investigative skill. Share this series with readers seeking whodunits with human appeal, like those by Lisa Gardner.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Early in Schaffhausen's worthy sequel to 2021's Gone for Good, Det. Annalisa Vega of the Chicago PD and Nick Carelli, her partner and ex-husband, are called to veteran police officer Leo Hammond's home, where they find him dead in his bedroom, shot with his own gun. Hammond's wife insists that an intruder, dressed in a black wetsuit complete with diving mask, killed him. An obvious suspect is Moe Bocks, who had a run-in with Hammond a month earlier in a bar. Bocks is believed to have murdered his girlfriend in 1998, but he wasn't charged for lack of evidence. That Vega's best friend has begun dating Bocks complicates the investigation. These and other cases entwine in unexpected ways and bring Vega to the attention of a band of dirty cops. She's soon suspected of murder, with conveniently planted evidence stacking up against her. Loads of exciting action, balanced with dramatic personal revelations and some fine nuts-and-bolts police work, keep the pages turning. Readers will look forward to the next outing for the complex, introspective Vega. Agent: Jill Marsal, Marsal Lyon Literary. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
From the multi-award-winning Andrews, past master of laugh-out-loud avian titling, Round Up the Usual Peacocks puts Meg Langslow on the trail of three separate cold cases when a member of her techie nephew's true-crime podcast team has an unfortunate accident that could have been attempted murder (40,000-copy first printing). In the New York Times best-selling Childs's A Dark and Stormy Tea, tea maven Theodosia Browning is approaching St. Philips Graveyard one rain-wrought night when she witnesses the murder of a friend's daughter and immediately starts investigating--never mind the serial killer loose in Charleston. In the Edgar Award-winning Krueger's Fox Creek, Ojibwe healer Henry Meloux protects a stranger named Dolores Morriseau who had sought his guidance but now finds herself pursued by hunters, with Cork O'Connor hot on their trail; his wife, Meloux's great-niece, is with the endangered Dolores (150,000-copy first printing). Author of the "Hugo Marston" mystery series, English journalist-turned-Texas prosecutor Pryor launches a new series with Die Around Sundown, set in World War II Paris, where Det. Henri Lefort has just a few days to solve the murder of a German major at the Louvre Museum (40,000-copy first printing). In Bark to the Future, latest in Quinn's doggedly funny New York Times best-selling series, PI Bernie Little and his devoted canine, Chet, try to figure out what happened to the woman who reigned as prom queen of Bernie's high school class and now seems to have vanished (75,000-copy first printing). With Quarter to Midnight, the New York Times best-selling Rose takes us to New Orleans, where police officer-turned-private eye Molly Sutton is tasked with helping a steamy-hot young chef prove that his NOPD dad's death was not suicide. Former director of the Wollongong Writers Festival, Scrivenor delivers the booming-big debut Dirt Creek, in which D.S. Sarah Michaels investigates the disappearance of 12-year-old Esther as she walked home from her rural Australian school even as Esther's classmates offer their own insights (150,000-copy first printing). In Schaffhausen's Long Gone, Det. Annalisa Vega recoups from having turned in her ex-cop father for murder by investigating a detective's suspicious death, which leads her to a slick car salesman trying to charm her best friend (40,000-copy first printing). Walker's popular hero, Bruno, chief of police in the Dordogne village of St. Denis, faces Spanish nationalists with plans To Kill a Troubadour after release of "Song for Catalonia" by a local folk music group.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Chicago looks more dangerous than ever in police detective Annalisa Vega's second case. Called to the scene of DS Leo Hammond's fatal shooting, Annalisa finds not only interior designer Kayla Hammond, his much younger wife; Annalisa's own ex-husband and current partner, Detective Nick Carelli; and their boss, Commander Lynn Zimmer, but two unwelcome new arrivals, Detectives Frankie Vaughn and Paul Monk, who together with Leo and Detective Tom Osborne worked together as the Fantastic Four, a team that racked up a slew of homicide arrests and made countless enemies along the way. Even after Zimmer claims ownership of the case for Division North, Vaughn and Monk make it clear that they're not going away, and Annalisa's left to figure out whether the well-insured Leo was killed by his cheating wife, one of his partners, or an intruder in a frogman suit Kayla insists she saw in the house. The list of suspects swiftly grows to include Moe Bocks, the used-car dealer Leo was convinced strangled Josie Blanchard back in 1988, and David Edwards, who's been released years after his conviction for killing Bass Lounge waitress Sandra Romero in a botched robbery that came to a hard ending when the Fantastic Four, arriving in response to her 911 call, shot club owner Cecil Barry dead. As Annalisa, who's not one to back away from confrontations, gets taken off the case and then placed on medical leave when she's suspected of murder herself, Schaffhausen piles on the complications and then faces the serious challenge of winding up the case, or cases. Maybe too much of some very good--that is, very wicked--things. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
