Dead Secret

★ ★ ★ ★ 1/2 (rounded up)
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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Before I dive in, I'd fully intended on having this posted five days ago, but I had to keep trashing paragraphs because I'd wander into a spoiler or three, and by the time I'd sanitized them enough to post, they were worthless. This has resulted in a shorter post than I expected, and one that may not feel up to my typical thoroughness for this series. There's a lot to chew on in this novel—more than anything since Dead Inside—but this isn't the place to talk about it.

The team were deflated – long nights, no solid leads – morale down – they needed to catch a break.

While they waited for more information, Maggie spent the majority of her day chasing up the curfew company, cross-referencing the prison tattoos – which was proving to be a very tedious job – and chasing up Social Care.

While waiting on hold, she recalled a conversation she'd had with her brother about how funny she found it that a large majority of the public believed that everything in a murder investigation was so exciting and moved quickly because of the way that it was portrayed in movies and TV – however a big part of her job focused on calls, computer work, research, and reports. She wished it was the opposite!

DEAD SECRET

Dead Inside

Worst Case Scenario

* See also two surprising, but effective, TV references. I don't remember this series doing that.

GIVE HER A BREAK
Several times throughout the novel, Maggie thinks about how tired she is—and how little downtime she's had between major cases. She didn't get a lot of time between these cases and the previous books (although she had even less between Books 2 and 3). Maggie needs to catch her breath if she's going to be any good to anybody. Her personal life is a mess, and I'm worried that her professional life is close it one, too. Her physical and mental reserves have to be beyond spent—and you can't help but wonder as you read this book (and the previous one) if she wouldn't have picked up on something sooner if she'd been coming at things with a fresh mind.

It's not much of a spoiler to say that Maggie isn't going to get a whole lot of downtime before Book 5's case takes over her life. But what comes after that? As far as I can tell

* I'm prepared to be shown that I'm wrong—and hope I am.

DEAD SECRET