Following up Angel Fire, Lisa Miscione’s gritty acclaimed debut featuring reclusive true crime writer Lydia Strong, this second novel ratchets up the suspense and the stakes. Fresh from a book tour promoting her account of her last case, Lydia receives an anonymous cry for help in her fan mail—a tape of a missing young girl’s desperate message on an answering machine. The accompanying note begs Lydia to find and protect Tatiana Quinn, “and all the other girls in need of rescue.” Maybe the plea strikes close to her heart; maybe her investigator’s intuition starts buzzing. But she can’t stop thinking about Tatiana Quinn.

But this simple case of a missing teenager soon becomes much more. Apparently someone is anxious that Lydia drop the case, someone powerful, someone who grows anxious enough to engineer the reappearance of one of Lydia’s first—and most dangerous—adversaries. Now, in addition to tracing the roots of Tatiana’s disappearance on a trail across the country from New York to Miami and eventually overseas, Lydia must find the man who wants her dead, his unfinished business from years ago.

Miscione’s talents for creating taut prose and bone-chilling suspense come alive once again in this gripping novel about obsession, greed, and revenge.