The Secrets They Left Behind: A Mystery

by Lissa Marie Redmond

A former homicide detective delivers an authentic and nail-biting mystery “full of twists and turns” as an undercover cop investigates a string of disappearances in small-town New York (San Francisco Book Review)

Three missing girls, no leads, a vault of dark secrets, and a case that’s getting chillier by the minute . . .

Three college freshmen go missing from their rural hometown of Kelly’s Falls while on Christmas break. Their cell phones, coats, and purses are left behind, but the girls have disappeared without a trace. As the days turn into weeks and the investigation grows cold, twenty-three-year-old Buffalo police officer Shea O'Connor is called on to dig up leads undercover.

Still bearing the emotional and physical scars of a previous case, O’Connor infiltrates as eighteen-year-old Shea Anderson, a college freshman and the “niece” of the town’s police chief. As she begins to immerse herself in the missing girls’ world, befriending their friends and family, and doing whatever it takes to maintain her cover, O’Connor realizes the track is far colder than she initially thought. But whoever was behind the girls’ disappearance was only warming up, and they have set their crosshairs directly on her.

The heat is on for O’Connor as she closes in on the shocking truth about what really happened the night the girls vanished.

• ISBN10: 164385299X
• ISBN13: 9781643852997
• Publish Date: 7 April 2020
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Crooked Lane Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 304
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9781643852997

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

The Secrets They Left Behind is a standalone (?) procedural thriller mystery by Lissa Marie Redmond. Released 7th April 2020 by Crooked Lane Books, it's 304 pages and available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats.

This is a well written FBI procedural with a young female protagonist on loan for fieldwork from the Buffalo PD. She has a history with the FBI and the supervisor with whom she's working which is revealed through a series of flashbacks throughout the novel. Her particular appeal for this case (and the prior assignment she completed for the FBI) is that she looks much younger than she actually is.

The story itself is interesting and set up well: the disappearance of three freshman women at a local small-town community college has her placed in the field undercover as a freshman in the same social circle as the missing girls. The plotting and story arc seemed oddly paced to me and moved forward somewhat unevenly however. The author devoted a fair amount of wordage to the interactions of Shea (undercover cop) and her freshman girlfriend group; exchanging clothes, doing one another's hair and makeup, talking about boys, and slagging off girls they don't like.

The book will likely find a willing audience in the new adult market and the strong romance subplot will probably be a bonus for those readers. I will say that the denouement and big reveal were strongly foreshadowed throughout the book and not much of a surprise. I also found my suspension of disbelief hiding behind the sofa over the deux ex machina methods that the author utilized to get Shea out of her predicaments.

The writing is capable. I recommend it to fans of procedurals who enjoy a large dose of romance with their mysteries. Three and a half stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.