Maidens of the Cave

Richards’s formulaic second thriller featuring forensic anthropologist Christine Prusik (following 2012’s Stone Maidens) sees the Chicago FBI agent once again entangled in bureaucracy. The Chicago field office’s new director, Patricia Gaston, seems more concerned with paperwork than closing cases, burying her agents in a flurry of mandatory daily reports. The new regulations get in the way of Prusik’s probe into the death of a 20-year-old college student, Ellen McKinley, whose body was found by an Illinois creek. The medical examiner speculates McKinley died of a heart attack as a result of hypothermia after swimming out of a nearby cave, but Prusik is skeptical that McKinley, who was on her school’s swim team, could have succumbed so easily. Her doubts are validated when an unusual indentation is found on the back of McKinley’s neck, indicating foul play. Meanwhile, Prusik learns of a similar murder in Indiana, which Gaston had kept from her since it was technically outside their office’s jurisdiction, and decides to ferret out the killer. Scenes from the perspective of the murderer—by now a tired genre cliché—don’t add to the suspense, and Richards makes Gaston a paper-pushing caricature rather than a plausible boss. Readers looking for the next Temperance Brennan will be disappointed. Agent: Elisabeth Weed, Book Group. (Aug.)