In Broad Daylight

At the outset of this diverting crime thriller from Harwood (Jack Wakes Up), FBI agent Jess Harding travels from San Francisco to Anchorage, Alaska, to investigate the murder of law clerk Samantha Parker, a U.S. senator’s daughter. All signs indicate that Parker’s death has the trademark of a serial killer whom Harding chased five years earlier. Harding’s hunt brings her to an isolated community of Russian Old Believers (“an old sect of the Russian Orthodoxy that split from the main strand in the seventeenth century”), who are displeased and distrustful, to say the least, when her questions wrench them out of their insular way of life. In the bewildering Alaskan wilderness, Harding has to rely on her colleague Oscar Linstrom, whose intentions, romantic or otherwise, are unclear. While the secrecy and remoteness of the bewitching Russian Old Believer community overshadows the mystery of the serial killer’s identity at times, readers will enjoy the ride through the land of the endless sun. Agent: Stacia Decker, Donald Maas Literary Agency. (May)