In British author Longworth's engrossing second police procedural (after 2002's Dead Alone
), Det. Insp. Jessie Driver is still emotionally off-kilter after a reckless affair with a high-profile suspect. She gets off to a bad start with her new boss, Detective Chief Inspector Moore, who's also recovering from an infidelity, by putting one foot after another firmly in her mouth. Moore harshly disapproves of Driver's handling of a missing-persons report filed by a high-strung actress and reassigns the matter to a male colleague turned rival. When the trail leads to an abandoned public swimming pool in a decaying gym, Driver stumbles across a mummified corpse that may be connected with an old drowning case. The plot threads are nicely interwoven, and Longworth plausibly portrays the conflicts among the police. She does an excellent job of keeping the reader guessing and skillfully hides clues in plain sight. The one false note is the romantic subplot involving rock star P.J. Dean, with whom Driver unwisely got involved in her last major investigation. Dean's lavish lifestyle and big ego seem a poor fit for Driver, who's more at home grappling with the mundane realities of the lives of those whose paths she crosses and whose passions and pain the author renders so well. Agent, Stephanie Cabot at the William Morris Agency. (Dec. 13)
