Noelle Marshall, of the eponymous series, is a main character readers come to admire. In this series, Kendra Elliot features a main character who was a minor character in her “Colombia River” series. But if, like me, you didn’t read that prior series, don’t worry. You’ll be drawn into this new set of characters and events right away. Noelle Marshall is a fascinating complex main character, but there’s an equal amount of focus on Max, the FBI agent who met her while investigating her in the first book in the series.
Noelle Marshall was almost killed when her second husband was brutally murdered, but she also became a suspect in that case. The resulting concussion left her with some memory issues, but she’s put the past behind her and works as a Deschutes County detective in Oregon. She moved from Sacramento, where she lived with her wealthy husband and his high-society family. Unlike that gilded existence, her life now has purpose.
She inherited her late husband’s millions and doesn’t need to work, but enjoys her job as detective. So while she lives in a huge home and wears custom-made Italian suits, she also is down to earth and generous. She lives with Max, her boyfriend, and Emma, whom she met in a prior novel in the series and who had a horrific childhood. Emma has been collecting stray animals, and everyone loves her cat, Cornbread.
In this novel, Elliot opens with a gruesome scene that is clearly labeled as happening 10 years ago. A woman named Crystal follows her husband and a woman from a bar expecting to find that he’s having an affair. Instead, she sees them meet a man, and after arguing with her husband, the stranger shoots the woman. Crystal runs, but she is caught by the stranger, and we don’t know what happens to her after that.
The action then switches to the present, and Noelle and her friend Rowan, and Rowan’s search and rescue dog, Thor, are taking a walk in the forest. Suddenly, Thor alerts them to a dead body. Then another one. Noelle and Rowan realize that they are standing on ground that is littered with buried bodies. It seems there is a serial killer.
But the bodies don’t provide much information, and what they do provide is confusing. One of the deaths was recent, but others go back more than a decade. One of the bodies is male, the others young females. One of the bodies is identified from her breast implants as Sydney Beason. Noelle can’t understand why, if she died over a week before, no one has reported her missing. Even more concerning is that when they go to her house, they see that she has a child who is nowhere to be seen. Where is Sydney’s child, Belle?
This mystery is complex, and between the missing child, the bodies showing up, and people with false identities, there’s a lot going on. We are also privy to Emma’s growing romance with Ollie, both young adults who have much in common. Ollie experienced severe childhood trauma as did Emma, and they are both quiet, thoughtful people. But somehow, Emma is part of the whole mystery, in ways that no one can divine.
Elliot manages to keep the different threads aligned perfectly as she also makes sporadic trips back in time so we get an idea of what happened to Crystal. What the novel demonstrates clearly is the importance of family — no matter how that family was made and who the family members are — and the love and caring that having a family provides. She creates a balanced novel with emphasis on the mystery, but also the development of the relationships in Noelle’s makeshift family as she, Max, and Emma (and, of course, the cat, horse, donkeys, and goats) grow to trust each other and bond. It’s a series that we want to keep reading as much for the fine writing as to keep track of Noelle and Max and see what the future holds for them.
Read “Her First Mistake,” the first book in the series, and “No One Knew,” the second.
This review was first posted on Bookreporter.com.