Don’t Talk to Strangers

Believable action and realistic characters distinguish Williams’s strong third novel featuring Atlanta-based PI Keye Street (after 2012’s Stranger in the Room). In the woods outside the small town of Whisper, Ga., the remains of two girls have been uncovered: Tracy Davidson disappeared more than a decade earlier, while Melinda Cochran vanished eight months before; each was 13 years old at the time she went missing. Sheriff Kenneth Meltzer wants Keye, a Chinese-American who was adopted by a white Southern family and who was fired from the FBI because of her alcoholism, to help build the killer’s psychological profile. Keye feels like a stranger in a strange town, where the other law enforcement officials are outright hostile to her and the residents veer from trying to assist her investigation to shutting her out of discussions. Readers will empathize with this flawed but gutsy detective. [em]Agent: Victoria Sanders, Victoria Sanders & Associates. (July) [/em]