IN THE CLEARING

By Robert Dugoni

This is a story about Seattle Police Detective Tracy Crosswhite, and a cold case that takes her back forty years.

Tracy is more than willing to take her days off reopening the supposedly “plain as the nose on your face suicide” of Stoneridge High senior, Kimi Kanasket. There is a present day case that Tracy is assigned, which is the shooting of Tim Collins. But this particular case has brought her two confessions already: one from Angela Collins, Tim’s wife who is divorcing him, and the other from Angela’s teenage son, Connor. Angela has retained her father, Attorney Atticus Berkshire as her lawyer, and the case is becoming nothing more than a headache.

It is because of this headache that Tracy becomes sympathetic to her classmate from the police academy, Jenny Almond. Jenny is the one asking her to take a look at the first big case Jenny’s father, Buzz, handled as a police officer in 1976. The evidence in that case indicated that Kimi threw herself into the river following a breakup with Tommy Moore. Buzz hadn’t ever been happy about the outcome of the case, so Tracy takes the time to review the evidence herself. She notes that Buzz had been very careful about collecting evidence many years ago, yet some of the evidence has vanished, leaving Tracy wondering why Stoneridge locals might be covering up the truth. And when Tracy gets that truth, readers will be extremely surprised.

The cold case is really the fascinating aspect of this tale. Tracy uses her contacts to get the evidence and pictures saved by Buzz and is soon convinced that suicide had nothing to do with this girl’s death. Now…all she has to do is prove it. “In the Clearing” is a book that’s definitely worth a read; Robert Dugoni knows his subject, his characters, and places them against a crystal clear, mesmerizing background that is the Pacific Northwest.