Publisher's Weekly Review
In this disappointing standalone from MWA Grand Master Collins (the Nate Heller series), members of the Galena, Ill., high school class of 2009 gather in their hometown to celebrate their 10-year anniversary, including local Krista Larson, the youngest female police chief in the country. The occasion is marred when Krista learns that a classmate, Sue Logan, was stabbed to death at her home in Florida some months earlier, apparently by someone she knew. When a second, similar murder occurs in Galena, a low-crime city, Krista brings her father, Keith, a retired homicide detective, on board as a special consultant. The plot unfolds as readers will expect, with the investigators working their way through the reunion participants, checking alibis and motives. The sections told from the killer's perspective, related in the second person, provide the only novelty, but they give away too many details about the murderer's identity to make the final reveal satisfying. Collins's fans will hope for a return to form next time. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Among the million visitors the little town of Galena, Illinoisthe birthplace of U.S. Grantattracts in a year are the attendees of a high school class reunion that seems to include a very determined killer.Even though her department is limited to 12 officers, Police Chief Krista Larson loves her job, loves her father, retired Dubuque Chief of Detectives Keith Larson, and loves the friends she went to school withloves one of them, reporter Jerry Ward, so much that until recently she let him live under her roof. The only classmate she's not so crazy about is glamourpuss Astrid Lund, who, years after stealing Jerry from Krista and then tossing him away, like so many other men, landed a high-profile job as an investigative reporter for a Chicago TV station. Soon after the reunion opens at the Lake View Lodge, whose general manager, hunky classmate David Landry, has made it available to the 65 attendees, Astrid fulfills her destiny by getting stabbed to death. It doesn't take long for Krista and Keith, working together, to link her murder to the stabbing of Sue Logan, another classmate, in faraway Clearwater, Florida, the summer before. Lots of people might have had a grudge against Astrid, but why would somebody kill Sue as well? Is there a larger pattern here? And will the killer strike again? Answering these questions requires the father-daughter team to put lots of routine questions to lots of unmemorable suspects and then to put some moreuntil it's time for still another reunion, with the leading suspects gathered together once again in the hope that one of them will crack.The result is a sedate thriller that reads less like Collins' usual retro-pulp (Quarry's Climax, 2017, etc.) and more like that of his wife, Barbara Collins. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Someone is killing members of the Galena Illinois High School class of 2009. Six months before the 10-year reunion, class member Sue Logan is brutally stabbed in Florida, shortly after a tense meeting with her murderer. During the reunion weekend, the victim is attendee Astrid Lund, the "girl most likely to succeed," who has become a well-known Chicago TV reporter. After trying to make amends for stealing her classmates' boyfriends in high school, she too meets with her killer before being stabbed to death. These murders and a third, seemingly committed by the same person land in the lap of another class member, Krista Larson, the country's youngest female chief of police 28, who calls on her widowed father, Keith, a retired police detective, as a consultant. This is a change of pace for Collins, best known for his fact-based historical-mystery series starring Nate Heller, and he describes it as an American take on Nordic noir. As such, it's a well-wrought tale, and, though it lacks the bite of the Heller novels, it will keep readers going through the suspenseful, if somewhat abrupt, climax.--Michele Leber Copyright 2019 Booklist
