Review: Hide

I discovered Tracy Clark's Cassandra Raines series in late 2020, when I was in serious need of 1) comfort 2) nostalgia and 3) escape. And while I know a lot of people like to read frothy Regency romances to get that fix, I go for competent female private investigators.  I am trash for competent female private investigators.  What can I say? I read a lot of Sue Grafton and Marcia Muller during my impressionable teen years.  So I'll admit it was with mixed feelings when I first heard about Hide "A Detective Harriet Foster Thriller."  Cass has been put on ice, and just as a secondary character was going to get embroiled into "something" that seemed to set up a fifth book.  Sigh.  Well, hopefully Cass will be back (soon, please soon!), but in the meantime spending time with Harriet is a decent consolation prize.

Chicago homicide detective Harriet Foster is back on the job, at a new precinct, after an administrative leave.  Her longtime partner, Glynnis, drove to work one day, stayed sitting in her parked car, took out her department issued gun, and shot herself. Harriet didn't see it coming. Had no idea her partner was struggling - her partner who was happily married and had two children at home. Compounding this is it's not the only tragedy Harriet is still reeling from. Her son was shot and killed in a robbery attempt, which led to the disintegration of her marriage and a now distant relationship with her family (her choice, they've been reaching out and trying to keep lines of communication open).  Getting back on the job, stepping into a new precinct, and getting partnered with an "old school cop" on the first day when her new boss is looking at her like she expects her unravel at any moment?  It's a lot.  And then the first body shows up.

A pretty, young, white college student is found under a pile of leaves, dumped, near Chicago's Riverwalk. She has been, quite literally, butchered, with red lipstick markings around her wrists and ankles.  Nearby? A young black man, passed out, with blood on his clothing. Harriet's "old school cop" partner jumps to the immediate conclusion but Harriet is immediately suspicious. It's a spot of blood. The woman was butchered.  One thing is for certain though, they need to get a line on things fast because the victim's last known whereabouts were at a defund the police rally.  The optics for the department are not great - and then a body of another dead white woman turns up. Needless to say, the heat turns up on the case exponentially. 

Clark is a Black woman and both of her series feature Black, female protagonists who are current or former cops, with all the crap and baggage that entails. It's how Clark writes about these challenges that's so riveting - you see the struggles and triumphs through Harriet's eyes. The ground she gains, the bullshit she has to circumvent or wade straight through - and at the start of this story Harriet is worn down. The loss in her life hangs off her like a shroud. She's grieving and now she's stuck with a new partner that just further exhausts her the moment she meets him. But she has a job to do - which means if he's not a help, he's a hindrance, and she will walk right through him if she must.  Clark never, ever monologues. She doesn't preach. Everything in this story exists because it's what the characters think, what the characters feel. How does Clark feel about the past, present and future of policing?  I couldn't begin to tell you - but I can tell you how her characters feel.  Which, to be frank, is what I want in fiction. I want to lose myself in the lives of fictional characters.

While this book is half police procedural, it's also half thriller.  Yep, buckle up kiddies, you get alternating points of view broken up by chapters.  We meet a troubled young man, Bodie Morgan, newly sprung from a psychiatric hospital after he took a plea deal for stalking a couple of women.  As the reader it doesn't take a genius to figure out that he's somehow tied to the murder victims, but how? In what way?  I'll admit that I was so entranced by Harriet, and her working the case, that the early Morgan chapters were tedious for me (Ugh, him again? When can I get back to Harriet?!), but once Clark starts tying the threads together the whole thing really started to cook for me.

I liked this story a lot and it was a quick, fast read - but like an idiot I now have to wait until December for book 2!  But it also means Tracy Clark is one of the few autobuy authors I have whose backlist I am totally caught up on.  That's saying something.

Final Grade = B+