Traceless

Veteran romance writer Webb plunges into the Olympic-sized romantic suspense pool with a fictional Alabama town, Pine Bluff, that has more secrets than the deodorant shelf at Piggly Wiggly. So it makes perfect sense when one of Pine Bluff’s own, Clint Austin, returns from a 10-year prison stint to track down the killer whose crime he was pinned with. Meanwhile, Emily Wallace, whose damning testimony cinched Clint’s conviction, has also come back to town, determined that Austin will continue to pay for his crime—after all, Emily herself caught him with his hands at the slashed throat of her best friend, Heather Baker. Complicating their adversarial relationship, Emily and Clint were an item in high school. That’s the least, if most titillating, of the complications surrounding Heather’s death. As first Clint, and then Emily, investigate the convoluted stories of that summer night, the real murderer is out to stop them. Skillfully managing a big cast, Webb keeps the suspense teasingly taut, dropping clues and red herrings one after another on her way to a chilling conclusion. (Sept.)