After the FBI suspends her for bending its rules, Special Agent Raleigh Harmon is looking for a chance to redeem her career and re-start her life.
Sent undercover to a thoroughbred horse track, Raleigh takes on a double life to find out who’s fixing the races. But when horses start dying and then her own life is threatened, Raleigh realizes something bigger—and more sinister—is ruining Emerald Meadows.
She’s never felt more alone.
Her one contact with the FBI is Special Agent Jack Stephanson, a guy who seems to jump from antagonistic to genuine friend depending on the time of day. And she can’t turn to her family for support. They’re off-limits while she’s undercover, and her mother isn’t speaking to her anyway, having been confined to a mental hospital following a psychotic breakdown. Adding insult to her isolation, Raleigh’s fiancé wants them to begin their life together—now—precisely when she’s been ordered not to be herself.
With just days left before the season ends, Raleigh races to stop the killing and find out who’s behind the track’s trouble, all the while trying to determine if Jack is friend or foe, and whether marrying her fiancé will make things better—or worse.
Raleigh is walking through the darkest night she’s faced, searching for a place where the stars shine bright.
My Review:
This is the fifth book in the Raleigh Harmon series and I have read all of them. I love this whole series but if necessary this book can stand alone. Raleigh is an unusual interesting main character. She starts off as being a forensic geologist for the FBI then things happen in previous books that change that. In the start of this book she is on probation with the FBI from what happened on a cruise ship in the last book. In this book she goes undercover at a race track. This author's writing is beautiful and descriptive. All aspects of the book come alive including the characters, plot, and scenery. There is a mystery aspect to this book but it really gets active toward the end. The middle part of the book deals with Raleigh and her different relationships including Jack the other FBI agent she often clashes with and never knows if she can really trust him. Her mother suffers from mental problems and is put in a hospital. Her fiance from back home also makes an appearance so Raleigh has her hands full. I enjoyed reading this book and can't wait for the next book in the series. Recommended.
Sibella Giorello grew up in the mountains of Alaska admiring the beauty and nature that surrounded her. She majored in geology at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts hoping to learn more about the landscape she loved back home. From there Sibella followed a winding path, much like the motorcycle ride she took across the country, which led to her true love, journalism.
She found herself in Seattle writing for rock-n-roll magazine and earned a journalism degree from the University of Washington before heading south to the land of great stories.
In Virginia, Sibella became a features writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. It was there she also met her husband and would hear Jesus whispering her name at a tent revival.
Sibella started writing about Raleigh Harmon as a way to keep her love of story-telling alive while staying at home with her young sons. As a journalist and author, her stories have won state and national awards, including two nominations for the Pulitzer Prize. The Stones Cry Out, the first Raleigh Harmon novel, won a Christy award for debut novel in 2008. Sibella now lives in Washington state with her husband and sons.
Visit Sibella Giorello online at www.sibellagiorello.com, Facebook or Twitter.
Review copy provided by Litfuse Publicity in exchange for an honest review.
