Book Title: Close to Home (Tracy Crosswhite #5) Review

Author: Robert Dugoni

Genres:  Thriller

Pub Date: 9/5/17

4 STARS

New York Times bestselling author Robert Dugoni’s acclaimed series continues as Tracy Crosswhite is thrown headlong into the path of a killer conspiracy.

While investigating the hit-and-run death of a young boy, Seattle homicide detective Tracy Crosswhite makes a startling discovery: the suspect is an active-duty serviceman at a local naval base. After a key piece of case evidence goes missing, he is cleared of charges in a military court. But Tracy knows she can’t turn her back on this kind of injustice.

When she uncovers the driver’s ties to a rash of recent heroin overdoses in the city, she realizes that this isn’t just a case of the military protecting its own. It runs much deeper than that, and the accused wasn’t acting alone. For Tracy, it’s all hitting very close to home.

As Tracy moves closer to uncovering the truth behind this insidious conspiracy, she’s putting herself in harm’s way. And the only people she can rely on to make it out alive might be those she can no longer trust.

 After finishing the fourth in the Detective Tracy Crosswhite series last weekend, I really couldn’t let her character go. What’s a girl to do? I decided to forego some filling-in-the-gap reading to complete the Modern Mrs. Darcy 2017 Reading Challenge. And I was quite content with the read…just what the doctor ordered. “Close to Home” picks up where “The Trapped Girl” left off in the lives of the “A” team (Violent Crimes section) stationed in Seattle, Washington. Tracy is newly married to Dan and trying to race against her ticking biological clock. Kins caved and is on the threshold of finally getting his hip replaced. Fazz is Fazz with his brood, and Del, let’s just say that in this outing Del is full of surprises.

Although the “hit and run” homicide in this novel takes place at the onset and the suspected perpetrator is discovered forth with, there’s so much more to the story. A new character is thrown into the mix Leah Battles, a naval defense attorney, and another very strong woman who is dedicated to Krav Maga training, honing her skills and mastery of chess and testing the elements as she bikes back and forth to the Naval Base and her home in downtown Seattle.

Add to the mix of this adventure is the fact that there’s been an outbreak of lethal heroin overdoses, which claim the lives of “good kids.” Is it possible that the hit and run are connected? The excellent sleuth skills of our intrepid hero and her buds were surely destined to get to the bottom of this unsettling drama.

Once again Robert Dugoni crafts a satisfying thriller that I found myself reading faster and faster as the story was on its climatic course. And as always with his novels, there was an added twist that took me quite by surprise. While I wait for Tracy Crosswhite #7 to come out, I will have ample opportunity to check out and read Dugoni’s other series, David Sloane, starting with “The Jurymaster.”