Criminal, by Karin Slaughter (Delacorte Press; $27.00)

1975:  What happened to Kitty, Lucy and Mary?  The three young women have disappeared, and Jane Delray, a fellow hooker, wants the police to find out. Soon Jane herself is dead, allegedly a suicide. No one seems to care about any of the missing girls. Not only were they in the life, they were also drug addicts, and their families had given them up long before.

But Atlanta Police Department detectives Amanda Wagner and her partner, Evelyn Mitchell, care. In the face of what today seems like unfathomable prejudice and outright hatred from their fellow cops, the two women doggedly pursue the case.  Despite being ordered to stop by those in a position to scuttle their careers, they don't give up until they've proved they're ever bit as competent as their male counterparts.

Present day:  Amanda Wagner is now a supervisor at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. A 19-year-old student at Georgia Tech has gone missing. GBI agent Will Trent recognizes that the missing girl is a dead ringer for his mother, murdered by his father around the time of Will’s birth.  When Will learns that his father is out on parole, he knows that the monster has picked up where he left off. But this time, it’s personal, and Will—and Amanda—will do anything they can to save other girls.

Karin Slaughter always writes good thrillers, and this one is no exception.  The unexpected twists and turns far outweigh the instances where the reader beats the investigators in figuring things out. 

Ransom River, by Meg Gardiner (Dutton; $25.95)

After the horrific accident that nearly cost her her life, Rory Mackenzie hoped to leave Ransom River, California, forever. But then the non-profit she worked for lost its funding and she had to return to the states, where a summons for jury duty awaited her.

The trial should have been somewhat routine: two cops, having an affair, were fooling around at one of their houses when they were surprised by an intruder. The female cop fired her weapon, killing the 16-year-old burglar. The dead kid turned out to be the son of Ransom River’s most notorious criminals.

But the trial turns anything but routine when two masked gunman manage to bypass the courthouse security system, burst into the courtroom, and take four hostages. The choice of hostage appears to be random—until they specifically choose Rory.  When the incident comes to a bloody end, the cops don’t believe Rory when she professes not to understand why the gunmen wanted her. If she is to clear her name, Rory must learn what the gunmen thought she knew.

She’s aided in her search by an old friend: Seth Colder, former cop, former fiancé. Seth was the reason Rory left Ransom River, and he’s the last person she wants to go to for help. Seth knows the town’s secrets, and he suspects there is corruption among the police. But he doesn't know the Mackenzie family's secrets, and how intricately those secrets are connected to an unsolved robbery committed years earlier.

Best known for her Jo Beckett and Evan Delaney mystery series, Meg Gardiner’s Ransom River shows she can handle a stand-alone mystery as well. This was a compelling summer read.

I'm Back!

Sorry to all of you mystery fans who have looked in vain for new reviews. Life—and my day job—got the better of me, and it’s been hard for me to get back into reviewing. (Truth be told, it’s been nice just to enjoy reading mysteries for a while, without having to critique what I was reading!)

But I’ll try to blog more regularly again, now that I’ve enjoyed a bit of a hiatus. Thanks for sticking with me, and watch this space for more reviews.