BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO ROT

The twists keep coming in this devilish PI mystery from Kenna (What Meets the Eye). Kate Myles left the LAPD after a spinal injury led to a painkiller addiction that cost her custody of her daughter. Struggling financially, Kate has returned to her childhood home, hoping to save enough money from private detective work to contest the custody decision. Then Kate's former colleague, homicide detective Harry Castile, contacts her via a genetics website and tells her that a person whose DNA profile matches Myles's is the prime suspect in the unsolved killing of teenager Lisa Forester, whose strangled corpse was found buried under a woodpile in Idlewood, Calif., 20 years earlier. Harry, who's eager to close the cold case, thinks the suspect must be a distant cousin of Kate's, and asks her to move to Idlewood to investigate. To make it worth her while, Harry recommends Kate to an Idlewood couple seeking a private eye to help exonerate their son, Jacob Coburn, who was accused of starting the fire that killed his sister, Abby. Kenna alternates chapters focused on Kate's investigation into the cold case with flashbacks that flesh out Abby's backstory, setting the two narratives on an unpredictable collision course. Lisa Unger fans will devour this. Agent: Liza Fleissig, Liza Royce Agency. (Nov.)