Eagle Rock: An Ash Cayne Novel

The uninspired fourth installment in Smith’s Ash Cayne series (after The Unspoken) finds the Chicago PI unearthing a sex trafficking ring while he investigates the death of a billionaire real estate mogul. When 77-year-old Elliott Kantor is found dead in his loft, tied up and wearing women’s underwear, the consensus among medical authorities is heart failure, but Kantor’s son, Simon, smells foul play, and he hires Cayne to look into it. Simon’s suspicions appear justified when Chicago bishop Keegan Thompson is found dead in a similarly unflattering position a few days later. Working with his Chicago PD connections, Cayne burrows deep into the activities of Illinois’s elite, learning that both Kantor and Thompson had ties to a vast prostitution operation. When a young woman dies in an apparent suicide on Chicago’s Northerly Island, Cayne knows he’s found a smoking gun, but he struggles to fit the case’s pieces together. Unfortunately, Cayne has transformed from a rough-hewn former police detective with a social conscience into a Porsche-driving, fine wine–sipping hedonist, and the shift has bled the series of immediacy and stakes. Despite solid pacing, little about this stands out. (Aug.)