Dead wind

In Wegert's standout third crime thriller starring Shana Merchant (after 2020's The Dead Season), the former NYPD detective continues to pursue Blake Bram, who abducted her after killing three women he'd met through a dating website. After she escaped, the traumatized Merchant joined the New York State Bureau of Criminal Investigation in Alexandria Bay, near the Canadian border, where she got more information on her quarry from another survivor of Bram, nine-year-old Trey Hayes. The case grows cold, though, by the time Hope Oberon is found strangled just across the border at the base of a wind turbine. Oberon was president of the development council of a neighboring city, Watertown, until she and three others were charged in a corruption scheme involving a wind farm. Merchant believes Bram is responsible, but she has other suspects as well, including opponents of the wind farm, foes of Oberon's father (Watertown's longtime mayor), and citizens angered by her graft. Wegert nicely balances plot and characterization. Fans of Denise Mina's Alex Morrow will be pleased. Agent: Marlene Stringer, Stringer Literary Agency. (Apr.)

Senior investigator Shana Merchant finally reaches something like closure with the human demon who haunted Death in the Family (2020) and The Dead Season (2020). Blake Bram, ne Shana's cousin Abraham Skilton, seems to be at it again. Nineteen months after Shana escaped from his clutches and three weeks after he kidnapped 9-year-old Trey Hayes, the New York State Police find Hope Oberon strangled at the foot of a wind turbine on Ontario's Wolfe Island. But Hope doesn't seem to fit Bram's usual profile, which runs to young and comely. The president of the Watertown development council, she'd been indicted along with Watertown city manager Sejal Basak and two other town officials for attempting to skim the profits from Green Wind Renewables' bid to install noisy, lucrative, environmentally responsible wind turbines around the town. The placement of Hope's body implicates other members of the Fraudulent Four, but when they all provide alibis, Shana and her partner, Tim Wellington, look more closely at Bram. Or rather, they look harder for him, since despite the efforts of Olivia Peck, the private eye Shana's Aunt Fee has hired to find her long-vanished son, Bram is a will-o'-the-wisp who turns up only to threaten or kill someone new. Wegert melds the police investigation so deftly with Shana's endless family drama, now complicated by the engagement of her ex-fiance, Dr. Carson Gates, to physical therapist Kelsea Shaw, Tim's ex-girlfriend, that most readers won't care that new suspects continue to pop up even as Shana's doing her best to ring down the curtain on her childhood companion's reign of terror. Congratulations to Wegert's hard-used heroine, who deserves a completely new adventure. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.