Buried road A novel

This is the third book in Tallo's compelling series featuring the indomitable Gus Monet, and while it stretches the boundaries of believability, it is also an all-consuming page turner. The narrator is Gus's 13-year-old daughter, Bly, who appears to be her mother's clone. Dangerously so. Gus and Bly had enjoyed a family life with journalist Howard Baylis until he went missing while the threesome were enjoying a camping trip on Lake Ontario--he'd been working on a local story that apparently threatened the wrong people. Three years later, seeking closure, his parents run his obituary in the newspaper. Outraged, Gus and Bly take off to the campsite where he was last seen, where they get a hostile reception. When the van that Howard was last seen driving is found, they find his notebook and phone and decide to revisit the story he was working on to find out who would have gone to deadly lengths to keep it from being revealed. There are many suspects, and Gus and Bly battle their way--literally--to the truth. When they find it, it is not what they, or the reader, at all expect. The artfully crafted closing makes it worth following them down every dark and eerie path.

Tallo's entertaining third mystery featuring Augusta "Gus" Monet (after Poison Lilies) finds the sometime-investigator reluctantly returning to her hometown in Ontario, Canada, for the funeral of her missing partner, Howard Baylis. Howard, a journalist, disappeared three years earlier while reporting a story about bird migration that took an unexpected turn when he uncovered the shady past of his main source. Now, Howard's family has finally accepted the likelihood of his death and planned a service. Gus, however, refuses to believe he's gone, and she resumes her quest to track him down after she stumbles on his obituary in the newspaper. Though the trail is stone-cold, Gus recruits her teen daughter, Bly--the book's narrator--to help her. Their efforts aren't well received by Howard's grieving parents or the police in Prince Edward County, but mother and daughter soon unearth new clues that threaten to blow the case wide open. With an intricate plot and three-dimensional characters, this marks the series' third straight winner. Here's hoping a fourth is on the way. Agent: David Halpern, Robbins Office. (Dec.)