AN UNSETTLED GRAVE

A female cop cracks a case from the past.

Now that she’s helped solve a serial killing (The Thief of All Light, 2018), Carrie Santero has settled into her dream job as an investigator with the Vieira County DA’s office, which covers a wide region of western Pennsylvania. As the office’s only female detective, Carrie gets no respect, and when a woman is raped by a man the victim describes as a police officer, Carrie’s boss shunts her off to another, apparently safer case so she won't be investigating her fellow officers. She takes up the new case out in the boonies, but the rape is always on her mind, and she is determined to come back to it at a later time. When Liston, Pennsylvania, police chief Steve Auburn was called out by some hunters who think they’ve found a human bone, he immediately knew what he was looking at. Back in 1981, schoolgirl Hope Pugh vanished, opening a case that’s never been closed. Sent out to help, Carrie discovers a moldering box of evidence containing photos, notes, a blanket, a knife, a sock, and a teddy bear. Using modern techniques and advice from her mentor, disgraced former cop Jacob Rein, she pulls prints from the knife and finds residue on the sock that is most likely semen. Pondering a letter signed by Jacob’s uncle, Police Chief Oliver Rein, she realizes that Jacob and Hope were the same age and knew each other. Carrie visits Jacob’s dying father, Benjamin Rein, who claims to have killed more than one person. A flashback to Jacob’s childhood shows him and his best friend targeted by school bullies. Jacob was practically raised by his uncle Oliver because Benjamin, a Vietnam vet, was an alcoholic with PTSD. Jacob became so close to Hope that he was devastated when she disappeared the night he was supposed to meet her in a secret place in the woods. Back in the present, Auburn wants to write off Hope’s death as an accident, but Carrie won’t stand for that. The past that alternating chapters present reveals a far different story than official records.

Schaffer, a former police officer, imbues the character-driven story with realism and heart-pounding suspense.