ECHOES OF TERROR

An Alaska cop whose past is shrouded in secrecy must deal with a crime that revives all her horrifying memories.

Officer Katherine Ward of the Skagway Police Department lives with her grandfather, whose Alzheimer's is progressing swiftly. Only the police chief, who’s on medical leave, knows that Katherine was once kidnapped, raped, and tortured by The Beekeeper, a sociopath who murdered her entire family. No one in the small department is much excited by Crystal Morgan’s claim that Misty, her 16-year-old stepdaughter, has been kidnapped. The two were supposedly bonding on a cruise while Crystal’s wealthy husband, Tom, is half a world away on business. With the chief out and, more importantly, another member of the department vanishing while on a fishing trip, Katherine gets the case, which soon produces some very bad vibes. Meantime, computer expert Vince Nanini, a fixer for Tom, has alerted the Canadian border patrol to look for Misty, whose computer indicates she had made arrangements to meet a young man and take off on a tour of Canada. Vince, a Vin Diesel look-alike, is not impressed with the search effort but pushes Katherine to let him travel with her. The vanishing of Sarah Wilson, the girl Katherine hired to cook dinner for her grandfather, brings back bad memories that are fanned into flame when she learns that The Beekeeper has been released from a Michigan mental institution. Kicked off the case when the department learns of the connection, she’s forced to depend on Vince in her continued search for the two missing girls, who she fears are experiencing exactly what she had years before.

Soule takes a break from her P.J. Benson series (Eat Crow and Die, 2015, etc.) for a hair-raising thriller that breaks no new ground but has all the excitement it needs to keep you reading.