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Summary

A special task force is put together to solve cold cases.

Stats

Genre: Adult mystery

Series length: Two

Violence: Light to moderate--most of the "violence" occurred in the past, though digging into the cases stirs up problems in the present

Magic/Supernatural: None

Romance/Sex: Light

Christian/spiritual element: Some explicit Christian elements

Recommendation: Those who enjoy cold case stories

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Opening Lines:

"Catch anything this morning?" 

Josh Thane turned at a woman's friendly call, smiled as he stood, and promptly decided to leave the fishing gear in the boat for later. "Hey, friend. It's good to see you." He stepped onto the dock holing his bucket and a stringer with two fish. "I'd give you a hug, but you don't want to smell like me." 

Traces of Guilt (Evie Blackwell Cold Case, Book 1)
by Dee Henderson

Evie Blackwell loves her life as an Illinois State Police Detective . . . mostly. She's very skilled at investigations and has steadily moved up through the ranks. She would like to find Mr. Right, but she has a hard time imagining how marriage could work, considering the demands of her job.

Gabriel Thane is a lifetime resident of Carin County and now its sheriff, a job he loves. Gabe is committed to upholding the law and cares deeply for the residents he's sworn to protect. He too would like to find a lifetime companion, a marriage like his parents have. . . .

When Evie arrives in Carin, Illinois, it's to help launch a new task force dedicated to reexamining unsolved crimes across the state. Spearheading this trial run, Evie will work with the sheriff's department on a couple of its most troubling missing-persons cases. As she reexamines old evidence to pull out a few tenuous new leads, she unearths a surprising connection . . . possibly to a third cold case. Evie's determined to solve the cases before she leaves Carin County, and Sheriff Thane, along with his family, will be key to those answers. ​

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Opening Lines:

As Governor Bliss came to the podium, Lieutenant Evie Blackwell dug her hands into her coat pockets, grateful the January cold would keep this press announcement on schedule and limited to twenty minutes. his inauguration just the day before had been sunnier and a few degrees warmer. She did her best to ignore the television cameras trained on the podium, knowing she and the other officers on the stage were now in their view frame, and that this clip would run on the local evening newscast.

Threads of Suspicion 
(Evie Blackwell Cold Case, Book 2)
by Dee Henderson

Evie Blackwell's reputation as a top investigator for the Illinois State Police has landed her an appointment to the governor's new Missing Persons Task Force. This elite investigative team is launched with plenty of public fanfare. The governor has made this initiative a high priority, so they will have to produce results—and quickly.

Evie and her new partner, David Marshal, are assigned to a pair of unrelated cases in suburban Chicago, and while both involve persons now missing for several years, the cases couldn't be more different. While Evie opens old wounds in a close-knit neighborhood to find a missing college student, David searches for a private investigator working for a high-powered client.

With a deep conviction that "justice for all" truly matters, Evie and David are unrelenting in their search for the truth. But Evie must also find answers to the questions that lie just beneath the surface in her personal life.

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