Don't Talk to Strangers

Keye Street is tough--a criminal profiler fired by the FBI for being a drunk, now four years sober and working as an independent investigator. Ann Marie Lee plays her with a gentle Southern voice that, while lovely, doesn't convince as authentic, or seem to fit the character. That said, it's easy to get over it and be swept along by Williams's nerve-shredding plot. At one point or another I suspected just about everyone in the small Georgia town where Keye is helping the local sheriff try to stop whoever is murdering teenaged girls. You've heard it all before, but the fun is in the details. Williams has created a terrific character in Street, and a slam-bang plot in this outing. B.G. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

May 5, 2014
Believable action and realistic characters distinguish Williams’s strong third novel featuring Atlanta-based PI Keye Street (after 2012’s Stranger in the Room). In the woods outside the small town of Whisper, Ga., the remains of two girls have been uncovered: Tracy Davidson disappeared more than a decade earlier, while Melinda Cochran vanished eight months before; each was 13 years old at the time she went missing. Sheriff Kenneth Meltzer wants Keye, a Chinese-American who was adopted by a white Southern family and who was fired from the FBI because of her alcoholism, to help build the killer’s psychological profile. Keye feels like a stranger in a strange town, where the other law enforcement officials are outright hostile to her and the residents veer from trying to assist her investigation to shutting her out of discussions. Readers will empathize with this flawed but gutsy detective. Agent: Victoria Sanders, Victoria Sanders & Associates.