I first encountered FBI agent Maggie O'Dell in more recent book by Alex Kava, where Maggie joins up with search and rescue dog handler Ryder Creed in Silent Creed. (See my post of 4/27/16.) It was such a good partnership, I've gone back to catch up with some of Maggie's earlier cases, starting with At the Stoke of Madness (#587).
This time Maggie heads to Connecticut to follow up on a missing patient for her friend and FBI consultant Dr. Gwen Palmer. Joan Begley left a message for Dr. Palmer asking for her advice about a man she's met while in Connecticut arranging for her grandmother's funeral. The problem is, she hasn't been heard from since that voice mail - she never checked out of her room or boarded her flight home to D.C. Since Maggie can't seem to bring herself to take a proper vacation, she decides to head to Connecticut to check out Joan Begley and to follow up on some personal business. She walks right into a police investigation of a grisly discovery in a local rock quarry. Could the first body found stuffed into a barrel there be the missing Joan Begley?
My husband particularly liked this one because of the Connecticut setting, not too far from where he grew up. I liked it because of all the red herrings Ms. Kava plants. Just when you think you've figured out who the killer is, she points you in the direction of a new possible suspect. I also got a kick out of the fact that she named the local undertaker Jacob Marley, yet avoided the obvious jokes about the character's name. It takes real restraint to do that! Anyway, I enjoyed this book, too, so it will be fun to catch up on the rest of this series.
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