THE EVIDENCE ROOM

A Florida police officer and a nurse tackle a cold case.

Josh Hudson, a police officer in the sleepy town of Cooper’s Bayou, lives with the horror of his brother’s abduction and murder by a serial killer. Josh’s father, a petty criminal, is in jail, and his sister has gone AWOL. When an undercover drug job leads him to a woman who claims to know where his sister is living, he lets her off and even pays her for information he never gets. Naturally, his actions get him into trouble, and he’s taken off active duty and sent to work at the Cooper County Evidence Room. Aurora Atchison has an equally painful connection to Cooper’s Bayou: when she was very young, her father murdered her mother. Wade Atchison was never caught, and Aurora’s grandparents raised her in faraway Connecticut, where she became a nurse. Now that her grandfather’s died and left her a house on the bayou, she returns to settle the estate. Aurora’s unanswered questions about her mother’s case lead her to the evidence room and Josh, who understands her need to get at the truth. The current coroner, reviewing the case, finds that Wade could not have been Raylene Atchison’s killer. So Aurora and Josh look for answers in boxes of evidence and interviews with townspeople. Soon the threats Aurora begins to get make it obvious that someone thinks they’re getting too close to the truth.

A promising debut whose ending doesn’t quite live up to the rest of the story.