THE BURYING PLACE
by Brian Freeman
Duluth’s Detective Jonathan Stride struggles with his own demons while pursuing a diabolical kidnapper.
Callie was the child who was supposed to save beautiful Valerie Glenn’s teetering marriage to her cold, brilliant orthopedist husband Marcus. Now Callie is missing, snatched from her crib in her luxurious lakefront home while her father slept alone in the next room. The case quickly turns personal: Itasca County deputy sheriff Denise Sheridan is Valerie’s sister; Stride’s longtime police partner Maggie Bei is looking for a more intimate connection; and his life partner, Serena Dial, is an ex-Vegas cop also assigned to the kidnapping case. Denise is distracted both by her clamoring family (four children, one with Down syndrome, and an unemployed spouse) and by a case of serial killings, the last of which is interrupted by young Duluth cop Kasey Kennedy, lost in the countryside fog on her way home. When the killer’s fury is turned on Kasey, Denise must help the rookie survive a maniacal stalker while Serena tries in vain to help the veteran Stride overcome his panic. As suspicions surround Marcus and his discarded mistress Regan Conrad, his relationship with babysitter Migdalena Vega, who lives in a trailer by a spooky cemetery, may provide a key to the case.
With a whopping surprise solution, Freeman’s latest (In the Dark, 2009, etc.) packs quite a punch from cradle to grave.