Frank H. (perryfran) reviewed on 7/14/2021 + 1178 more book reviews

This book, along with a few other in the series, has been sitting on my shelves for several years. Finally got around to reading it and based on this one I'm motivated to read more in the series. The narrator and protagonist, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad. Years before, he and his two friends were playing in the woods and did not return to their homes as expected. The police find one of the friends, Rob (who went by Adam at the time), gripping a tree trunk, terrified, and wearing blood soaked sneakers. But he cannot recall anything that happened to him and his friends and the case was never solved; his friends or their bodies never recovered.

Years later Adam had changed his name to Rob and is put on a case with his partner, Cassie, to investigate the murder of a 12-year-old girl in the same woods. Only Cassie knows that Rob is actually Adam Ryan, a possible conflict in this case. So could this new case be related to the disappearance of Rob's friends twenty years earlier? Ryan does get some flashbacks of some of what happened in the woods and one of the people he remembers is the father of the young girl murdered. Could he or someone in his family be responsible for the girls's death? There is also an archaeological dig going on where the girls body was found. Could someone on the dig be responsible?

I overall enjoyed this police procedural with Rob and his partners going through the evidence to try to solve the murder. There is also a possible element of the supernatural thrown in which may have been a factor in the original disappearance of Rob's friends. And then there is a somewhat unexpected twist on what really happened. Even though I thought this book was longer than it needed to be and Rob turned out to be somewhat of a jerk, I'll still be looking forward to reading more of this series.

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