Three female schoolteachers go missing in San Francisco and Detective Lindsay Boxer is on the case - which quickly escalates from missing person to murder.
Under pressure at work, Lindsay needs support at home. But her husband Joe is drawn into an encounter with a woman who's seen a ghost - a notorious war criminal from her Eastern European home country, walking the streets of San Francisco.
As Lindsay digs deeper, with help from intrepid journalist Cindy Thomas, there are revelations about the victims. The implications are shocking. And when Joe's mystery informant disappears, joining the ranks of missing women in grave danger, all evidence points to a sordid international crime operation.
It will take the combined skills of Lindsay, Joe, and the entire Women's Murder Club to protect their city, and themselves, from a monster.
This is the eighteenth in the Women's Murder Club series (I've read them all). Though it is part of a series, it does work as a stand alone. There are four members of the Women's Murder Club ... Lindsay, Cindy, Claire and Yuki, though the focus in this book is on Lindsay. Cindy, Claire and especially Yuki are barely there. Yuki makes her first brief appearance about a 1/3 of the way into the book and if you didn't know what her job was, you had to wait until she made her second brief appearance about halfway into the book and that's when you find out she is a prosecutor. I found this slack editing.
Lindsay is a detective with the San Francisco Police Department and her husband Joe works for the FBI. This story happens five years ago so Lindsay and Joe are newly married and don't yet have a daughter.
Three teachers have disappeared after having drinks one Monday night and Lindsay and her partner, Rich, are assigned to the case. As they dig deeper into the case, they discover the teachers aren't as wholesome as everyone thought and this adds a bit of a dirty element to the case.
In the meantime, Joe is approached by Anna, who had escaped from war torn Eastern Europe a few years ago. There she was a young housewife with a baby. Her husband and baby were killed and she, along with other young women of childbearing age, were taken and beaten and raped. The man ultimately responsible was arrested but reportedly died. Anna sees him living a couple blocks from her in San Francisco so she goes to Joe to report it. Joe gets involved because he wants the guy to pay for all he had done.
I liked the writing style of this book and thought it went at a good pace. I liked the short choppy chapters. The point of view shifted ... it was first person perspective when the focus was on Lindsay and third person perspective when the focus was on others such as Joe, Anna and the kidnapped school teachers. As a head's up, there is swearing and graphic violence.
I thought the stories were okay, though I couldn't believe Anna, while traumatized at all she had gone through back home, would be that dumb and naïve to follow around the monster responsible. She knew he was dangerous ... how could she think she could outsmart him?! I thought it was a bit of a coincidence that in the big ole city of San Francisco that Lindsay and Joe may be working on the same case.
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