Local Girl Missing

Again. Lisa Regan has done it again with another slam-dunk winner of a book that I could barely tear myself away from. (For my other reviews of books in the Detective Josie Quinn series, go here, here, here, here, and here.) Seriously. I had to keep sneaking peeks on the Kindle app on my phone when I couldn't quite finish the book on my lunch hour. I was at 87% and I could.not.wait until I got home to see what happened!

Josie and Noah are coming back from their long delayed and much deserved honeymoon, driving home on a very foggy road, when someone dashes in front of their car. They stop to try to help and come upon a man choking a teenage girl, demanding to know where “it” is. As Noah tries to save the girl, Josie pursues the man. But he evades her when he jumps off a precipice and disappears, not caring if he lives and seemingly hoping he dies. As they investigate the scene, they realize Dina Hale is dead. Her friend and passenger, Alison Mills, was able to flee and was presumably the person who ran in front of their car. With the killer possibly still on the loose, finding Alison becomes of utmost importance.

The more Josie and Noah and the team dug into the case, the more questions they face. Who is the killer? What is his connection to the two girls? What had the girls stumbled onto, that someone (the killer? Someone else?) would go to such lengths to get it back?

Y'all. The tension in this book is unbelievable. The misdirections, the shifting of gears, the pulling away of things I thought I had figured out. Lisa Regan is a master of the thriller/police procedural, I tell you. I'm not sure anyone does it better. The killer is identified pretty early in the story, but that's just the tip of the suspenseful iceberg. One character's backstory is told in flashbacks, and we don't know who she really is until late-ish in the story. And we don't know for most of the book who the real mastermind behind all of this is.

When the penny dropped? My jaw hit. the. floor. I did not see it coming, and what a reveal! I absolutely adore a book that can keep me in the dark until the end, and Regan has done that with every book of hers that I've read.

It made me happy that Josie and Noah finally got their honeymoon. They deserve to be happy together. Trout, Josie's dog, is a delightful character. I love their interactions with him. And I really like how the team all works together. Nobody squibbles about not wanting a particular assignment. When Josie texts Chief Chitwood in the middle of the night, he tells her to go back to sleep after he responds. When she doesn't, he's up and out, helping her and Noah track down whatever lead she's thought of in the wee hours. They're supportive of each other and genuinely kind to each other, and that's a treat to read, especially considering the difficulty inherent in their work.

If you want a rip-snortin', hang-on-for-dear-life, screaming rollercoaster of a thrill in book form, you'll want to make the acquaintance of Detective Josie Quinn. This one can be read alone, but do yourself a favor and start at the beginning of the series. Then binge 'em all.

Five stars. I'll read whatever Lisa Regan writes without even looking at the blurb. She's on my short list.

Disclaimer: I received an advance review copy from Bookouture and NetGalley. All opinions here are mine, and I don't say nice things about books I don't actually like.