Some SPOILERS for “Gone Baby, Gone” below

This, the fifth of the Kenzie-Gennaro series, sees Patrick and Angie estranged, their personal relationship and professional partnership at an end following the devastating events portrayed in Gone Baby, Gone. Instead Patrick is working alone on routine missing persons cases when he finds that a former client has killed herself. Feeling guilty at having failed her Patrick decides to look into her death to find out just what happened. What transpires is a dangerous cat and mouse game with a psychopath whose particular modus operandi is the undermining of peoples’ lives and driving them to suicide.

There are strong echoes of the second Kenzie-Gennaro, Darkness Take My Hand, in the plot of this book. But the well trodden nature of the plot is probably secondary in this novel to the question of how Patrick and Angie begin to rebuild their personal and professional relationships. In addition, pleasingly, Bubba takes a more central role in this book, filling in large parts of his back story in the process.

So, not the best in the series, but still a fine outing with two of the most likeable gumshoes in literature.