A case hits close to home both literally and figuratively for Maine deputy sheriff Lizzie Snow. Life changes dramatically when, fueled by a tip that her long-missing 10-year-old niece, Nicki, may have been spotted near Bangor, Lizzie takes a job working for Sheriff Cody Chevrier in Aroostook County. Gone is her Boston high-rise overlooking the river. Gone are the nights of clubbing with pals. Here in Bearkill, a night out means a trip to Area 51, a local dive bar, with Trey Washburn, DVM, owner of Great North Woods Animal Care, or a dinner of donuts and diet Coke shared with Dylan Hudson, a fellow cop she used to date until she found out he was married. Lizzie gets a jolt when 15-year-old Tara, daughter of local firefighter Peg Wylie, goes missing. Tara's disappearance is all too similar to Nicki's abduction nine years ago. But Lizzie's world is thrown completely out of kilter when Jane Crimmins turns up in Bearkill shortly after Tara drops out. The deputy remembers Jane from a discovery in New Haven that made headlines while Lizzie was still working in Boston. Three young women had been locked in a basement by sociopath Henry Gemerle. One of them was Cam Petry, Jane's cousin. Gemerle was remanded to a forensic mental hospital after being deemed unfit for trial. But once he escapes, Lizzie has a hunch where he's headed, and that hunch can only spell danger for Tara. Although they're also set in Maine, Graves' Jacobia Tiptree and Ellie White cozies (A Bat in the Belfry, 2014, etc.) are a far cry from this tense and fast-paced tale of love gone horribly and fantastically wrong. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Graves's dark second Lizzie Snow mystery (after 2015's Winter at the Door) examines the ugly, soul-destroying things that mark the aftermath of a child abduction. At age 15, Jane Crimmins is kidnapped from a party in a New Haven, Conn., park, along with her 15-year-old cousin, Cam Petry. Jane escapes soon afterward, but she tells no one of her experience or that three other victims remain in captivity. Fifteen years later, the police arrest Jane's abductor and rescue three young women, including Cam, from his New Haven house. Now Jane lives in terror that someone will find out what she did-and didn't-do. Jane retreats to Bearkill, Maine, where Lizzie, a sheriff's deputy, hopes against hope to find her niece, missing since her sister's murder eight years before. A tough cookie, Lizzie can't resist getting involved in the case of another missing girl, whose mother is less than forthcoming. Meanwhile, a fire raging in the nearby woods serves as an objective correlative of the case, burning all who touch it. Agent: Jane Rotrosen, Jane Rotrosen Literary Agency. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.