What waits in the woods

Parlato's grim second mystery featuring Det. Rita Myers (after All the Dark Places) opens with 29-year-old Esme Foster returning to her hometown of Graybridge, Mass., after a hip injury ends her career as a professional dancer. The last thing Esme expects to see when arriving at her ailing alcoholic father's home is a crime scene in the woods behind the house. Hours earlier, Esme's childhood best friend, Kara Cunningham, was killed there by an assailant who crushed her skull with a rock. Immediately, Esme recalls the car accident that killed her mother years earlier, and the strange man who appeared at the scene and threatened to murder Esme. She suspects that he came back and attacked the wrong woman, given how closely she and Kara resemble one another. When Rita gets assigned to the case, she focuses her attention on Cynthia Ridley, a mentally disturbed neighbor of Esme's father who killed her own younger sister 20 years ago. As more secrets come to light, however, Rita's list of suspects grows. Parlato's multidimensional characters and effective use of red herrings will keep readers invested right up to the gasp-worthy conclusion. Series fans and newcomers alike will look forward to Rita's next case. Agent: Marlene Stringer, Stringer Literary. (Jan.)

A failed ballerina's return home is turned upside down by the appearance of a dead body in her family's yard. It gets worse. The woman who's been beaten to death is Kara Cunningham, the best friend of Esmé Foster, who, forcibly retired two years ago from her chosen career after pushing herself too hard, decides to retire voluntarily from her live-in boyfriend and go back to Graybridge, Massachusetts, where her alcoholic father, Thomas Foster, has cirrhosis of the liver, which amounts to a death sentence. Thomas was behind the wheel when an accident killed his wife, Jennifer, 13 years ago, and the troubled Esmé is traumatized still further by her persistent teenage memory of the unidentified man who leaned in the window of the car in which she'd been trapped with her unconscious father and her dead mother and announced: "I'm going to kill you!" The neighboring Ridleys have been equally messed up ever since Cynthia Ridley, her brain injured from a childhood tumble down a flight of stairs, was sent to a psychiatric facility after a quarrel aboard a boat led to the drowning of her younger sister, Wendy. In chapters that alternate between the viewpoints of Esmé and veteran police detective Rita Myers, who's saddled with her own family history, Parlato piles on the rumors, menace, and revelations until readers faced with an embarrassment of riches can only watch as one mystery after another is cleared up with disappointingly little logical progression, much less inevitability. A highly effective mood piece for readers willing to skip the last 50 pages. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.