Fire Trap

Kroll’s uneven third and final T.J. Peterson mystery (after 2017’s The Hell of It All) plunges the reader into the world of hardcore porn and other ugliness that lives on the dark web. Despite his having been thrown off the Halifax, Nova Scotia, PD, Peterson, a barely reformed drunk who tries to avoid the tormenting texts from his drug-addicted daughter, goes on a search for Britney Comer, the missing journalist daughter of an old friend. Britney has disappeared and is being tortured—with the video evidence finding its way to Peterson—following her request to meet with her dad, a highly placed government official who deals with being blackmailed by committing suicide. A wealth of unsavory aspects of Peterson’s past and people he’s connected to surfaces in the process. But the overload of wickedness and depravity feels gratuitous, and characters come across as caricatures: the hacker girl, the psycho torturer, the drugged daughter. In a crime novel that reads like a morality tale—preaching that one reaps what one sows—the redeeming factor is the uneasy sense of closure at the end, along with a thin shred of hope. This one’s strictly for series fans. (Oct.)