Right Behind Her

WHAT'S RIGHT BEHIND HER ABOUT?

Since Bree has moved back, her brother Adam has been trying to get her to go visit their childhood home with him. It's important for him to reconnect with her there, to get her help understanding the place where their father murdered their mother and then killed himself—he was too young to remember anything. He thinks it'll be good for her, too. Bree has put it off for months, but as the novel opens, they're finally there.

She's able to show Adam around a little before things get too overwhelming for her—as they start to leave they stumble on someone squatting in their old barn. There's an altercation, and in the aftermath, one of Bree's deputies stumbles upon some human remains that had been buried in a shallow grave.

It's a lot to ask of a novel's first twenty pages—significantly advance a story arc and introduce the instigating event for a police procedural. All without cutting to a song by The Who (although one, or the NCIS/Castle instrumental themes, would have worked well at the close of Chapter 3). It's the best opening in the series so far.

Given the evidence around the bodies, the killings happened long enough ago that Bree's father is a suspect—but there are others as well. Bree and Matt turn up a lot of old secrets and scandals in their hunt for the murderer. And many of those involve Bree's family.

Meanwhile, the County Supervisors are finally meeting with Bree about her budget—and it's not going well. It doesn't help that the squatter she arrested is the drug-addicted brother of one of the Supervisors directly involved.

Basically, this is not going to be the easiest period of her new career as County Sherrif.

I ADMIT TO SOME APPREHENSION

Let me preface this by saying that I like the series, and that doesn't change in this book. Still, I think the books could easily become over-dramatic. Leigh's avoided that, but there've been a time or two that I worried she might not. However, when I read in the description:

When he mysteriously disappears and Bree's niece is kidnapped...

I will admit that I got nervous. This could easily have taken on the air of some sort of Lifetime movie or something. Her niece and nephew are great as part of Bree's non-professional life—I really think things could get overwrought if they become part of the procedural.

It didn't. Not even close. I breathed a big sigh of relief. I still think it's a danger moving forward, but that's for another day (or not).

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT RIGHT BEHIND HER?

This is easily the best of the series—in terms of writing, character, complexity of the case, and overall execution. While I've enjoyed them all, the second and third books made me wonder a bit if the series could live up to the expectations set by the first—I'm not that worried anymore.

There've been three storylines that have been going since the debut and I feared Leigh was going to stretch them out another 2+ books before really doing anything with them, and she made noticeable advancements in them all—actually, in every ongoing story, but those are the ones that were starting to chafe.

I still want a little more for Chief Deputy Todd Harvey. If Leigh had given us that in addition to all the rest? I'd probably be raving about this. I'm still recommending it heartily, but I'd be doing it with an exclamation point if she'd done something with Todd.

There's some good sleuthing here, some great character moments, solid action, and even a little romance. If you like your police procedurals to have some heart, you'd do well to give these a try. I'm eager to see where Leigh takes these characters next, and I think you will be, too.

3.5 Stars