“People are funny about their secrets. It doesn’t matter if anyone else cares or not. People will guard their secrets like junkyard dogs, and take them to the grave if they can.” – Vince Leone
There are a lot of secrets being kept in Oak Knoll, California in Secrets to the Grave, author Tami Hoag’s sequel to last year’s Deeper than the Dead.
Hoag wastes no time plunging the reader into the story, opening the book with a horrific crime scene depicting the aftermath of the brutal knife murder of single mother Marissa Fordham. Her four-year-old daughter, Haley, was also attacked and left for dead, languishing for two days with her mother’s corpse before being discovered.
Detective Tony Mendez is tapped to head up the investigation, and knows from recent experience to make use of a tremendous resource located in town, former FBI Agent Vince Leone, one of the pioneers in the field of behavioral profiling.
Mendez also seeks assistance from child advocate Anne Navarre Leone, herself nearly a victim the previous year of the so-called “See No Evil” killer that plagued Oak Knoll (the case which initially brought her then FBI Agent, now husband Vince Leone to town). Together they must try to help a traumatized child recover and, if possible, provide them with information to help catch her mother’s killer. (more…)
