By golly, this is a good book! In fact, it's an excellent series; I admit I skipped the first one ("Cold Comfort"), but I thoroughly enjoyed the second ("Cold Trail") and this, the third featuring Hartbourne Metro Detective Bridgette Cash, is better still.
As this one begins, Bridgette is back at work after events of the previous book brought trauma - including the loss of her partner. She's escorted to an underwater cave, where a diver found two dead bodies: one many years old and the other relatively fresh. Both, it's determined, died as a result of gunshots to the head. Other than that, clues as to their identity remain submerged, but Bridgette begins an investigation that hopefully will land results.
Her beloved supervisor, Felix Delray. has her back; but he's at the mercy of a commissioner who, let's just say, isn't Bridgette's biggest fan (nor she his). In part because Bridgette may be in danger as a result of her continued attempts to find the person who murdered her mother a couple of decades ago, the commissioner orders up a new partner named Aaron Sterling. He's obnoxious, arrogant and disdainful of women (Bridgette in particular), but she's determined to make the best of the situation.
Initially focusing on the more recent victim, Bridgette finally narrows the list to a missing person at a local horse breeder's operation. Her boss claims to know nothing about the place (why the police wouldn't be fully aware of it since it sponsors an annual race that brings in an attendance of 70,000 is a puzzlement to me, but hey). At any rate, he gives Bridgette the go-ahead to visit, checking out the stable that belonged to the man who suddenly disappeared and learning that he isn't the first.
That discovery leads to other links in the investigative chain, a bang-up ending and, of course, fodder for another book. For those who enjoy police procedurals with interesting characters and plenty of action, I recommend that you give this series a try. Meantime, I thank the author for offering me a copy to read and review. Well done!
Cold Hard Cash by Trevor Douglas (Amazon Digital Services LLC, March 2019); 325 pp.
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