Dead Ends

Near the start of Balzo’s well-crafted second mystery featuring Wisconsin reporter AnnaLise Griggs (after 2011’s Running on Empty), AnnaLise is in Sutherton, N.C., where she’s been looking after her ailing mother. She’s surprised and embarrassed by the arrival of her former lover, Benjamin Rosewood, the DA of Urban County, Wis., and his wife, Tanja, and their teenage daughter, Suzanne. Ashamed of her dangerous liaison, AnnaLise tries to avoid Rosewood, but is drawn to him after Tanja dies in a terrible car accident on Sutherton Mountain. When one tragedy follows another, AnnaLise finds herself in the middle of a tightening web of deadly intrigue—and at the top of police chief Chuck Greystone’s suspect list. The well-drawn North Carolina setting is integral not only to the plot but also perhaps to AnnaLise’s most endearing quality—her abject terror of the area’s narrow mountain roads, full of crazy switchbacks and heart-stopping overhangs. Agent: Nancy Yost, Nancy Yost Literary. (Oct.)