Speak for the Dead: A John Santana Novel

In Valen’s solid seventh novel featuring St. Paul homicide detective John Santana (after 2015’s The Darkness Hunter), Santana looks into the stabbing murder of Kim Austin, an accident investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, whose body was found buried in a cave along the Mississippi River. Austin was last seen attending a security conference in St. Paul six months earlier. She had been part of a team examining the crash of an airliner off the coast of California that killed 217 people two months before the conference. As Santana probes Austin’s life and work, two FBI agents warn him off exploring the plane crash, and the body of another young woman, a convenience store clerk, turns up in a cave by the river. The trail eventually takes the dogged detective to Colombia, where he confronts el Lobo, a contract killer, in a dramatic showdown. Readers will look forward to Santana’s further adventures. (Oct.)