Under a Silent Moon: A Novel
On the same day that Polly Leuchars is bludgeoned to death in a village near London, her neighbor Barbara Fletcher-Norman is found dead in a car that went over a nearby cliff. Forensics link the two cases into a single operation, the first investigation to be headed by newly promoted Detective Chief Inspector Louisa &#x201C;Lou&#x201D; Smith of Major Crimes. Beautiful, blonde, 27-year-old Polly, a groom at the horse farm owned by wealthy, crime-connected Nigel Maitland, started sexual relationships casually with both men and women (among them Maitland, his daughter Flora, and Fletcher-Norman&#x2019;s widower), spurning the commitment that some of her lovers sought. While a quick and simple solution to the case presents itself early on, Smith and her team keep digging, despite her discomfort at working closely with DC Andy Hamilton, with whom she had a prepromotion fling. After three stand-alone novels&#x2014;the latest being the suspenseful Human Remains, 2013&#x2014;real-life police analyst Haynes debuts a promising procedural series featuring a strong lead character who could just become a genre stalwart. --Michele Leber