NEVER TELL

5 stars out of 5

Over the past few years, I've read four books by this author, and every single one earned a 5-star rating from me. As such, I wasn't too worried about this one. And guess what? It carries on the tradition of high marks; quite literally, I didn't want to put it down once I got started.

The "stars" of the show are D.D. Warren, a sergeant detective in the Boston Police Homicide Division, and her feisty street-wise informant, Flora Dane. Once a tortured kidnap victim, Flora mostly works as an advocate for survivors of similar crimes; she's far from healed emotionally, but her horrific experience turned her into a force to be reckoned with.

The story begins with a pregnant Evie Carter, who returns home to find that her husband of 10 years, Conrad, has been shot and killed. She admits she believes he'd been cheating - and also to picking up the murder weapon and "killing" his computer with several well-placed shots. But she insists she isn't his killer. D.D. gets called in on the case, and immediately there's a problem: Several years earlier, Evie's father was shot and killed in a similar fashion. Evie admitted to the shooting, but swore it was an accident (a claim backed up by her mother). Ultimately, her father's death was deemed an accident. D.D. investigated that years-ago case - and she's always had doubts about Evie's innocence. The second time around, something really stinks; D.D. just doesn't buy the coincidence thing.

And that's not the only coincidence; as D.D. leaves the latest crime scene, she spots Flora across the street. D.D. learns that Evie's husband may have had a connection to Jacob Ness, the awful man who kidnapped and tortured Flora. As the chapters shift from the points of view of D.D., Evie and Flora, the connections between the latter two women and the men they knew get stronger and stronger - as did my eagerness to know how the whole thing would turn out. If Evie really didn't kill her father, who did? Was her husband of 10 years and the father of their unborn child keeping dark secrets from her?

I know the answers, of course, but I'll [insert book title here]. What I will do, though, is recommend this one - another one well done!

Never Tell by Lisa Gardner (Dutton, February 2019); 414 pp.