Out of the Dark

July 1, 2024
Will DCI Christine Caplan ever get back to investigating major incidents in Glasgow? Not if the criminals who throng the outlying areas have anything to say about it. Because she's in the neighborhood, Caplan is called to a house in Balloch whose two residents, longtime domestic partners, are both dead. The initial theory that the deaths were a murder-suicide gets more complicated when the pathologist indicates that chiropodist Roderick Taylor, who'd been given a terminal diagnosis, died at least two days before financial adviser Peter Todd, who was found hanged inside their home. For better or worse, Caplan's soon distracted by a more urgent case: the disappearance of Bethany Robertson, who was burnishing her college applications by volunteering at the charity house Revolve Center, shortly after she left the place in the company of Shivonne McDougall, a hard-luck resident she'd befriended. Bethany's widowed father, William, who's so afraid that he'll lose her as he did his wife that he secretly snaps pictures of her leaving every day, appeals to his friend Rory Ghillies, a retired detective chief constable who turns out to be no help at all. More promising, though more frustratingly cryptic, are the few words Rachel Ghillies, the wife he's placed in hospice, manages to utter to Caplan, her classmate in police college: a plea to search for someone who might or might not be named Nicholas Straightman. Caplan's determination to track down this mysterious person plunges her into an unnerving series of kidnappings whose latest victim may well be Bethany Robertson. In a setting like this, Todd and Rod will have to fight for attention. Just when you think things can't get any more sordid, Ramsay relentlessly drops you into an even lower level.

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August 1, 2024
DCI Christine Caplan never played the political games necessary to advance in the Scottish police, which is how she ended up in rural Scotland, leading a tiny police force of oddball cops. But her team--loudmouthed, sarcastic Mackie, quiet McPhee, strange but highly intuitive Craigo--has her back. Her latest case is one of the most complex and devastating she's ever faced, involving a suspicious double suicide and the disappearances of twentysomething Bethany Robertson, who volunteers at a local rehab center, and Shivonne, the young woman she was mentoring. Then Christine is invited to visit her old nemesis, Rachel, who's dying of cancer. Rachel's whispered, dying words lead Christine to link Bethany's and Shivonne's disappearances to a series of violent cases--some recent, some decades old--where people vanish, only to be found months or years later, their bodies showing signs of brutal torture. Ramsay's third Christine Caplan book (after In Her Blood, 2023) is dark, unsettling, brutal, and tragic, but it also provides glimpses of warmth, humor, and humanity. A fine choice for fans of Ian Rankin and Val McDermid.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.