Robert Dugoni has done it again with My Sister’s Grave. The author has written a series of bestselling legal thrillers featuring Seattle-based trial attorney David Sloane. Dugoni himself is a civil law attorney. Murder One found both Dugoni and Sloane in new territory – criminal defense law. It was as good as, if not better, than most of its competition (Turow, Grisham etc.). David Sloane does not appear in My Sister’s Grave.
The story takes place over a twenty year period in Seattle and, mostly, in Cedar Grove, a fictitious town in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains not far from Seattle, WA. In the early 1990s, Sarah Crosswhite disappears oh her way home after losing, on purpose, a gun competition to her older sister Tracy. The town, the local justice system, her family and her friends are never the same. Edmund House, a paroled rapist is arrested for the crime. Her body was not found. Tracy quits her teaching position to enroll in the Seattle Police Academy because she has issues with the way her sister’s disappearance was handled.
Flash forward twenty years. Cascade Lake is drained for the first time since Sarah’s disappearance. Her body is found by hunters and their dogs. Tracy is a respected Homicide Detective with the Seattle Police Department. When she goes to her sister’s funeral, she meets an old friend whom she has not seen in decades. Dan had gone to the East Coast and became a successful defense attorney in Boston. He burned out and returned to Cedar Grove where he opened his own law office.
Tracy reveals her doubts to Dan as well as her extensive file on the case that she had been secretly amassing for twenty years. They decide that the wrong man had been arrested via a frame-up. They want to see justice done. The case is appealed. Tracy and Dan have several possible suspects – the sheriff, the prosecuting attorney, the rapist’s uncle and a traveling salesman. The climax takes place in a raging blizzard.
You will not be disappointed in Robert Dugoni’s latest thriller. If I could, I would give it TEN STARS.
GO! BUY! READ!
–Jim Harris, retired book sales rep
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