An Unsettled Grave

May 15, 2019
A female cop cracks a case from the past. Now that she's helped solve a serial killing (The Thief of All Light, 2018), Carrie Santero has settled into her dream job as an investigator with the Vieira County DA's office, which covers a wide region of western Pennsylvania. As the office's only female detective, Carrie gets no respect, and when a woman is raped by a man the victim describes as a police officer, Carrie's boss shunts her off to another, apparently safer case so she won't be investigating her fellow officers. She takes up the new case out in the boonies, but the rape is always on her mind, and she is determined to come back to it at a later time. When Liston, Pennsylvania, police chief Steve Auburn was called out by some hunters who think they've found a human bone, he immediately knew what he was looking at. Back in 1981, schoolgirl Hope Pugh vanished, opening a case that's never been closed. Sent out to help, Carrie discovers a moldering box of evidence containing photos, notes, a blanket, a knife, a sock, and a teddy bear. Using modern techniques and advice from her mentor, disgraced former cop Jacob Rein, she pulls prints from the knife and finds residue on the sock that is most likely semen. Pondering a letter signed by Jacob's uncle, Police Chief Oliver Rein, she realizes that Jacob and Hope were the same age and knew each other. Carrie visits Jacob's dying father, Benjamin Rein, who claims to have killed more than one person. A flashback to Jacob's childhood shows him and his best friend targeted by school bullies. Jacob was practically raised by his uncle Oliver because Benjamin, a Vietnam vet, was an alcoholic with PTSD. Jacob became so close to Hope that he was devastated when she disappeared the night he was supposed to meet her in a secret place in the woods. Back in the present, Auburn wants to write off Hope's death as an accident, but Carrie won't stand for that. The past that alternating chapters present reveals a far different story than official records. Schaffer, a former police officer, imbues the character-driven story with realism and heart-pounding suspense.

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June 17, 2019
Multiple plot contrivances and a lead investigator who makes questionable choices mar Schaffer’s sequel to 2018’s The Thief of All Light. Viera County, Pa., police detective Carrie Santero is assigned to the case of Monica Gere, a rape victim who alleges that she was assaulted by a police officer who pulled her over. When Santero reaches out to touch Gere to console her, bafflingly without asking for permission, Gere pushes her away and becomes hysterical, leaving Santero with little basis to counter her superior’s belief that the accusation was a false one. Meanwhile, Santero looks into a cold case—the remains of a child’s foot found in the woods is believed to belong to Hope Pugh, whose disappearance 40 years earlier was never explained. When Santero’s dogged efforts lead her to a missing case file, she makes a decision that shows poor judgment: she attempts to preserve a fingerprint on a knife from the case file in her hotel room rather than transport the evidence to a laboratory. Neither investigation comes to a satisfactory solution. Hopefully, Schaffer, a veteran police officer, will do better next time. Agent: Sharon Pelletier, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.

August 1, 2019

When a rape victim says her attacker was a police officer, Carrie Santero, the youngest, least experienced, and first female detective in Vieira County, PA, doesn't handle the case with kid gloves. She's sent to assist a police chief in the western part of the state, where a small human foot was found buried in the woods. Her mentor, Jacob Rein, won't tell her why he can't get involved, but he points her in the right direction. Thirty years earlier, when Hope Pugh went missing, she was a friend of the young Jacob. His uncle was the police chief in the area. None of the earlier records are easily available, and nobody's telling the truth about the multiple deaths that occurred in one week in the area. Alternating sections of the book flash back to that pivotal week, revealing a story of violence and vengeance. VERDICT The author's knowledge and experience as a police officer give this thriller verisimilitude. Although the story bogs down in the middle, the characters of Santero and Rein in this sequel to The Thief of All Light are intriguing. Readers might want to pick up the first in the series for background. Fans of Alex Kava and Meg Gardiner will appreciate the procedural details.--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2019
After a cop, or a cop impersonator, pulls over and then rapes a female driver in western Pennsylvania, Detective Carrie Santero requests DNA from all area officers on duty at the time. But Chief Harv Bender sends her to a neighboring jurisdiction that has requested assistance after human remains were found there, thinking to get Santero out of the way for the present. The remains turn out to be those of Hope Pugh, a child who disappeared in 1981, and the discovery opens questions about how she died years earlier. The long backstory draws in Jacob Rein, now a former detective and Santero's mentor, who became a close friend of Hope's in elementary school, and it also involves Rein's father, Vietnam vet Ben; his uncle, Police Chief Ollie Rein; other law enforcement officers; and a predatory biker gang. Police detective Schaffer knows his milieu well, and here he fleshes out both Santero and Rein, introduced in The Thief of All Light (2018), in a plot that includes young love, parental negligence, and revenge taken to the extreme. A solid entry in what is becoming a noteworthy series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)