THE HUNTER

When a disgraced NYPD detective returns reluctantly to her small-town Ohio home, bringing her young daughter with her, she is drawn not only into a possible murder mystery, but also into the long-buried secrets of her own family and of the town’s leading citizens.

Nobody knows why Leigh O’Donnell pulled her gun on a fellow NYPD officer during a chase, least of all Leigh herself. In those three minutes, she admits, “I had blown up my life.” Now suspended from duty and alienated from her husband—who is also her commanding officer—she retreats to Copper Falls, Ohio, where her brother, a cop, invites her to join the local force. There, she begins to investigate what looks like a triple suicide, but it’s one that eerily echoes a similar event decades earlier. The recent victims, all 25-year-old White men, were “cleaned in preparation for slaughter. Ritualized.” And all three had recently visited an elderly local woman who has mysterious knowledge of ancient shrines hidden in the Copper Falls caves. The ensuing drama unfolds at a brisk pace with just enough suspense to keep the reader jogging along. Tension flags, however, when yet another plot twist materializes—could those maple syrup operations be meth labs? Is that really a twin sister? Is the sacred cave a crime scene?—and when the protagonist’s perpetual agonizing—should she stay or go back? Does she still love her husband?—becomes more irritating than engaging. The rural landscape is, however, powerfully evoked. “By now, it was almost ten in the morning,” Leigh notes of one outing. “We were driving away from the center of town, toward a blanket of rust red and hunter green and lots of nothing.”

A competent though clunky thriller and family drama.