Daily Archives: September 7, 2020

Book Review: The Innocent Girls by B.R. Spangler @BR_Spangler @bookouture

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The Innocent Girls
Detective Casey White, Book 2
B.R. Spangler
Bookouture, September 2020
ISBN 978-1-83888-258-7
Trade Paperback

From the publisher—

Tears stream down her face as she feels the cold blade press against her neck. The sweet scent of her daughter’s favorite strawberry pancakes all around, her last thought is for her beautiful girl. Please, please let Lisa have escaped.

When Detective Casey White is called early one morning to a beachside vacation campsite in the Outer Banks, she finds the bodies of Carl and Peggy Pearson side-by-side, their throats cut, and their thirteen-year-old daughter Lisa nowhere to be found. Haunted by memories of her own missing girl, Casey fears this could soon become a triple murder: because without the medication found in the bathroom cabinet, Lisa has just days to live.

As her team struggle to untangle the meaning of the cryptic symbol carved into the victims’ skin, Casey searches the area for signs of Lisa: and is rewarded when she finds her blistered and barefoot, staggering along the highway. The girl barely has breath left to whisper ‘he invited me’ before blacking out.

Days later, another couple is found murdered on a vacation yacht. A different symbol is etched on their bodies, and their teenage daughter is also missing. Casey’s only clue is an unsettling ‘invitation’ found on the girl’s phone, to a secluded building out in the cornfields.

Desperate to uncover who is luring these innocent families to their deaths, and certain forensics have missed something vital, Casey matches up the crime scene photos herself. The symbols combine to form an upcoming date. The killer is taunting them with the timing of the next murder.

Racing to follow the invitation in time, when Casey arrives she is shocked to glimpse not the missing girls from this case, but her own missing daughter…

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These days, fictional police detectives seem to be loaded down with a lot of baggage and that’s certainly the case here. Casey’s daughter vanished when she was a small child, a very difficult thing to live with, and now she has to deal with a double murder and missing teen.

This story doesn’t have quite the high-octane tension of most thrillers but there’s a good deal of suspense, particularly because of the problems any resort area police force would have when faced with serious crimes involving vacationers. The usual tactics of interviewing people the victims know back home aren’t as helpful and it’s unlikely that they have had enough time in town to create serious troubles with other people so Casey knows soon enough that the killer(s) are probably strangers. When the teen, Lisa, is found some of the initial pressure is relieved but then another parent is murdered and the daughter goes missing. As leads develop, it seems that a cultish church might have something to do with these crimes but Casey can’t be sure.

There are a few side issues involving Casey’s relationships with the former sheriff, the mayor and her colleagues on the force but she naturally dwells on what happened to her own daughter paralleling, in a way, with the current crimes. A questionable confession takes Casey down ever more twisty paths resulting finally in a diabolical solution.

Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, September 2020.

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Purchase Links:
Barnes & Noble // Kobo // Apple
Google Play // Amazon // Indiebound

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About the Author

B.R. Spangler here. I’m a resident of Virginia along with my family, five cats, two birds, a hamster, and a lizard. During the day, I work as an engineer and spend my off hours writing, editing, and thinking up the next great story.

I split my time across pen names, writing crime thrillers, science fiction, horrors, paranormal and contemporary fiction.

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