A Review of "Deeper Than the Dead" [4]

Deeper Than the Dead by Tami Hoag
Signet, ISBN 978-0451230539
October 26, 2010, 560 pages

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Nothing in her training prepared fifth-grade teacher Anne Navarre for how to help her students deal with what happened that day. Tommy Crane and his friend Wendy Morgan were running through the park to escape the class bully when Tom tripped and fell down a small hill, landing on top of a dead body. It is the body of a missing young woman, buried up to her neck, her eyes and mouth sealed shut with super glue. In 1985, it does seem that quiet Oak Knoll, California is the sort of place where this kind of thing happens. But when you look a little deeper it seems that everything in Oak Knoll may not be quite as placid as it first seems. Even in the families of the children involved.

The sheriff's department does not want to believe that a serial killer may be loose in their community but they can't deny it when it is found that this may be his third victim. When another woman is discovered to be missing, the urgency only increases and Detective Tony Mendez is a new breed of cop, willing to take advantage of all the cutting edge technology he can to solve the crime. Help comes in the person of FBI agent Vince Leone, one of the government's new criminal profilers. Leone, barely back to active duty after his own near death attack, may not be firing on all cylinders but he is still the best hope they have of discovering what fine, upstanding citizen may be a murderous psychopath. And maybe save the next victim in the killer's sights, a victim whose identity will touch very close to home.

Ok, I guessed who the killer was, even with the many red herrings thrown in the reader's path. But that is not necessarily a bad thing, because the ride there was a good one. Good characters, several of whom appear in Hoag's next book, a good setting, a good story, good writing and a grisly serial killer, all concluding with an exciting climax and a sad, disturbing twist...what's not to like?

Ok, there may be a thing or two.

The books takes place a few decades ago, before the advent of national databases of fingerprints and before DNA identification was available. But really, it becomes a bit disconcerting to be told that again and again. I really do not think police departmentals sit around thinking, "golly, if we only had...." whatever technology the future may bring...because it does not exist yet.  Odd, unnecessary and rather annoying.

But a small matter in what is otherwise a good solid thriller, with a bit of romance and a sometimes disturbing look at what may reside just below the surface of that seeming nice, quiet, successful family living just next door.
Certainly good enough to make me look forward to check out the sequel, Secrets to the Grave that was released in December.

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My thanks to Library Things Early Reviewers for my copy of this book.

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