Review: Fall: A Detective Harriet Foster Thriller by Tracy Clark

 

It has been a few months since Hide as Fall: A Harriet Foster Thriller by Tracy Clark begins and things are still rather tense in the squad room. Detective Foster is still haunted by the past and doing her best to function in her minimalist life. She works, goes home, and stares at the tree outside her house, and sleeps. That daily ritual is interrupted by having to attend the resentencing hearing of her son’s killer at the Cook County Courthouse.

Trying to explain to others the depths of her loss is unfathomable. A situation that Marin Shaw is in though in a far different way.

For one thing, her child, Zoe, is still very much alive. But, Marin Shaw has not seen her daughter in three years because former Chicago Alderman Marin Shaw has been in prison. An alcoholic, a lawyer, a wife, a mother, and a progressive Democrat member of the city council, until her personal house of cards came tumbling down. She did the crime and she has done the time though she could have made life far easier if she had rolled over for prosecutors and told all.

She steps out of Logan Correctional one winter’s day, a free woman though her guilt about what she has done is its own form of prison. Thankfully, her lawyer and friend, Charlotte Moore, is awaiting her in order to whisk her away from the prying eyes of the media and others outside the prison walls.

The plan, and it is so not her plan, is for Marin to go to the condo downtown as her husband, Will, and Zoe, wait for the latest round of media scrutiny to fade. Will does not want Marin at the house so as to not stress Zoe. All Marin cares about is Zoe, so she agrees to the situation for now.

At the same time, the story about Marin Shaw is once again a media focus. She wasn’t alone in the corruption, but she stayed quiet. With her publicized release, some of her fellow aldermen are quite concerned as to what she will do now. There are weak links in the corrupt group, as there always are, and threats are made between several group members.

Then the murders begin.

Detective Harriet Foster and Li catch the first murder. Alderman Deanna Leonard is dead on the sixth floor of a Chicago parking garage from what some would conclude was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Much the same way Foster’s old partner committed suicide, also with no warning, sometime back. And while Leonard’s death reminds her of that, there are differences, and Foster is not convinced it was a suicide. The Especially after the medical examiner confirms it definitely was not.

At the time of Shaw’s trial, it was widely speculated that Alderman Leonard was part of the latest crowd of crooks at city hall. But, Shaw never named names. That leaves Foster and Li wondering if Shaw took vengeance? Or was some sort of random killing just hours after Shaw got out. Did she do it? Did she hire someone? Is she involved?

There are many questions to answer and a lot to do.

Fall: A Harriet Foster Thriller by Tracy Clark is a complicated novel that works very well in all areas. Multiple storylines with many moving pieces, it is best to have read Hide before reading this book. Character development for Foster and several others continues and builds upon what readers already know and does so while not interfering with the main storyline. Rich, complicated, and full of detail, this second book in the police procedural series is just like the first, a mighty good read.

 

My digital ARC came from the publisher, Thomas & Mercer by way of the NetGalley system with no promise of a review. 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2023