DESOLATION CANYON

4 stars out of 5

This is the second in the series featuring LAPD Detective Margaret Nolan, and it's every bit as good as the first. Maybe even better, because the first introduced me to a character I loved - Sam Easton, a former electrical engineer who has suffered from PTSD because of a deadly attack in Afghanistan when he was in the military. I hoped to see more of him, and in this book, I got my wish.

As this begins, Margaret is dealing with her own kind of PTSD as a result of her brother's death in Afghanistan and the fact that she killed someone in the line of duty. On one of her days off, she meets up with a sometimes-more-than-friend for drinks at the bar of a posh hotel. When the two wander out for a walk around the property's lake, they get a rather nasty surprise: A dead man is floating in it. Turns out he's a very successful lawyer who got rich in the international trade business.

Meanwhile, Sam's good friend Lenny has some issues of his own and asks Sam for help. Lenny, it seems, has picked up a woman and her young daughter who told him she was trying to escape from a religious retreat located in a remote part of the nearby desert. Run by a man called Father Paul, the retreat is quite popular with the rich and sometimes famous who are trying to get in touch with their inner selves. So why on earth would anyone need to run away?

That's a good question that needs a good answer - even more so when it becomes clear that the mother and daughter may still be in danger. And soon, even more questions pile up as the cases Margaret and Sam are involved in begin to merge with potentially dangerous consequences for all the characters. The subsequent investigations and goings-on kept me on the edge of my seat throughout, although I'll admit to having a bit of trouble keeping all the scenarios and characters straight for the first half of the book or so. 

The bottom line? Thoroughly enjoyable and highly recommended (it's not necessary to read the first book, Deep Into the Dark, to get the gist of this one, but since it's always a good idea to start at the beginning (and it's an excellent book as well), I'll suggest that possibility. Now, I'm looking forward to the next installment and thanking the publisher, via NetGalley, for the opportunity to read a pre-release copy of this one. Nicely done!

Desolation Canyon by P.J. Tracy (Minotaur Books, January 2022); 352 pp.