ONE GOOD EYE

His second present-day case carries a Long Island police chief even further into his past.

Called to his old friend Jenny Racine’s house in the wake of Tropical Storm Kyle, Centre Brookville Chief Jeep Mullane finds that even though Jenny’s been seriously injured in a home invasion, she wants him to leave without making a report. In some ways this makes sense. Even though she’s widely known as wealthy entrepreneur Pirate Jenny, his old school friend has had more than her share of trauma: There was the car crash that led to her nickname when a shard from her sunglasses was driven into one of her eyes, and there was also her separation from Aaron Stubblefield, who was with her in that pickup truck 23 years ago when it was hit by Mark Lanzarotta, who paid for his second DUI with his life. As in his striking debut, Johnny Careless (2025), Wade zigzags between the present-day investigation Jeep pursues in spite of Jenny’s protests and interleaved chapters showing events from successively closer time frames. He shows Jeep’s history of falling into and out of Jenny’s orbit as he tries out a romance with Niven Croft, asks awkward questions of Jenny’s neighbor Winnie Peel, and struggles to stay on the best side of both his higher-ups in the force and lowlifes like Max Dupree, president of the Long Island chapter of the Buccaneers Motorcycle Club, who may have valuable information to share. As in Jeep’s first appearance, the figure in the carpet is the remarkable ability of virtually all parties to forgive some truly unforgivable sins.

Not so much a whodunit as a morality play set on the North Shore.