The Trapped Girl and My Sister’s Grave by Robert Dugoni

My Sister’s Grave

The Trapped Girl

 

 My Sister’s Grave (Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 1)

What’s it about?

Tracy Crosswhite has spent twenty years questioning the facts surrounding her sister Sarah’s disappearance and the murder trial that followed. She doesn’t believe that Edmund House—a convicted rapist and the man condemned for Sarah’s murder—is the guilty party. Motivated by the opportunity to obtain real justice, Tracy became a homicide detective with the Seattle PD and dedicated her life to tracking down killers.

When Sarah’s remains are finally discovered near their hometown in the northern Cascade mountains of Washington State, Tracy is determined to get the answers she’s been seeking. As she searches for the real killer, she unearths dark, long-kept secrets that will forever change her relationship to her past—and open the door to deadly danger.

You can buy a copy of this book on AmazonUS | AmazonUK.

Review

I’ve read the book in 2015 and written these next few paragraphs before starting my blog but I nevertheless wanted to share what I felt about it at the time. 

A solid whodunnit with a lovely twisted ending.

Tracy’s sister Sarah went missing one evening 20 years ago. A previously convicted rapist, Edmund Parker, was found to be the perp and incarcerated for the crime. For 20 years Tracy believes they have the wrong person in jail. And now, with the receding waterline, her sister’s body is discovered. Tracy takes it upon herself to investigate and to help Edmund file a motion based on new evidence so the case would be reopened. To her a conspiracy seems to exist and nobody in the small town wants her digging up skeletons of the past.

I liked the surprise effect when finding out who the real killer was. A smart ending, good writing style, and even in the courtroom it was entertaining to hear the case being presented the way it was. I will definitely pick up the sequel.

The Trapped Girl (Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 4)

What’s it about?

When a woman’s body is discovered submerged in a crab pot in the chilly waters of Puget Sound, Detective Tracy Crosswhite finds herself with a tough case to untangle. Before they can identify the killer, Tracy and her colleagues on the Seattle PD’s Violent Crimes Section must figure out who the victim is. Her autopsy, however, reveals she may have gone to great lengths to conceal her identity. So who was she running from?

After evidence surfaces that their Jane Doe may be a woman who suspiciously disappeared months earlier, Tracy is once again haunted by the memory of her sister’s unsolved murder. Dredging up details from the woman’s past leads to conflicting clues that only seem to muddy the investigation. As Tracy begins to uncover a twisted tale of brutal betrayal and desperate greed, she’ll find herself risking everything to confront a killer who won’t go down without a deadly fight. Once again, New York Times bestselling author Robert Dugoni delivers a taut, riveting thriller in the fourth installment of his acclaimed Tracy Crosswhite series.

You can buy a copy of this book on AmazonUS | AmazonUK.

Review

What a book, what a brilliant author ! This is the fourth book in the Tracy Crosswhite series and my second read of the series. I’ve read My Sister’s Grave too and I loved that one as well. I didn’t feel as if I missed anything in book 2 and 3 either. There are some references to her sister and the events in the first book so I didn’t miss anything. But even if you’ve not read the first one you can still read this as a standalone novel.

The story pulled me right in, right from the moment a local youngster pulls up a crab pot with a hand sticking out. It seems easy enough at first, the woman had had plastic surgery and her identity can be established that way but that’s only the start of it. She seems to already have been missing presumed dead on a mountain months ago. She went to great lengths to disguise her true identity, even had false identity papers made up. Why did she do all of this, and who found out she wasn’t dead? She seemed to have covered all of her tracks. Didn’t take one thing from her old life with her and just vanished into the night on the mountain.

I can’t tell you any more but the case is not as crystal clear as you might think, but then it never is, is it? But really this time the author made my head spin, directing my suspicions towards one person, only to throw in a few twists that changed the whole scenario again, and in the end you just don’t know which is which anymore. You really have to keep your head at it this time and I like it so much if a book can get my mind so occupied the world seizes to exist. It’s a good thing the author explains everything so clear and thoroughly because otherwise I might have been lost in the who’s who and who did what. And don’t let me even get started about the ending. Heart-stopping and brilliant is what it was !

The writing reminds me strongly of Karin Slaughter’s books and if you’d say to me that she wrote this I would actually believe you.. but credit to whom credit is due, Robert Dugoni sure knows how to write a clever, complicated and exciting thriller. There’s a lot of attention to detail, quite a few red herrings to keep his readers highly entertained and even a bit of sarcasm sprinkled throughout the book. The plot was very engaging and the characters very likeable, apart from the cop that looked into Andrea’s disappearance and Andrea’s husband. Tracy is a great detective and even though the biggest focus was on the investigation there was a little bit of her personal life too, just enough to make us cheer for her, Dan and her dogs, Rex and Sherlock.

If you like thrillers then you really should give this one a try. I bet you won’t be disappointed!

I received a free copy of this book from the publicist through Netgalley in exchange for my honest opinion.

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