“Our Daughter’s Bones” by Ruhi Choudhary is the first of what must be an engrossing series.
Mackenzie Price survived life with an alcoholic and abusive father. Though he never touched her, Mackenzie was well aware of him beating her mother. In 1998, Mackenzie came home to find father’s body on the kitchen floor, his head bashed in with a cast-iron skillet.
Her fear of her father is replaced by guilt when her mother insists that Mackenzie help her drag her father’s body into the woods for burial. Her young mind can’t comprehend all the complications of going to the police, but deep down their actions will haunt her every move.
Fast forward 20 years. Mackenzie has returned to Lakemore, Washington, as a detective in the local police force. Her beloved grandmother and her mother have both died, and she is married to a skilled prosecutor, Sterling Brooks. But Mack’s childhood trauma is always with her.
Her guilt is combined with the pain of her husband’s recent affair. She should have confronted him, but her entire existence is based on maintaining complete control and she fears what would happen if she ever let go.
It is mid-September and the small city of Lakemore is bubbling in anticipation of the football season. Over 20 years ago, a winning season and local players going on to the pros put the city on the map. After retiring from pro ball, Bill Hanson returned and revitalized the program and the town with a passion Mack can’t understand.
Her team has just been handed a missing person’s case. Just one year ago, high school golden girl Erica Perez disappeared. Now her best friend, Abby Correia, has disappeared, too. Because the Perez family is wealthy and powerful, Erica’s case is big news, but Abby’s case has gotten little press.
As Mack digs into Abby’s many journals, she finds that Erica had all the advantages but didn’t apply herself in school and should dump her boyfriend. Abby is an A student and pushed Erica to do better.
To everyone’s great surprise, Erica’s body is found in the same woods where Mack and her mother buried her father. She was buried alive following a blow to the head.
A chance conversation causes Mack to look into cold cases of missing girls. Two other young women disappeared, but their cases got only cursory investigation and went cold as a series of robberies took prominence. Righteous indignation drives Mack to find answers to all four cases.
She is furious to learn that back when the football team started winning big, they were allowed to do horrendous things to young women that weren’t from Lakemore. Those two bodies were branded with 916. Now that the team is on top again, someone has resurrected the “916” club.
Not surprisingly, the original 916 team members went on to become prominent and powerful Lakemore citizens, including rival newspaper publishers. Who is copying their misdeeds and why are they being protected? When she manages to find Abby, things fall into place and Mack follows the clues to the arrest of the town’s most powerful.
Then it is time to confront Abby. The girl finally admits to luring Erica into the woods where they fought about Abby’s controlling behavior. After hitting Erica, Abby panics and buries her, then pretends to know nothing about the disappearance.
When the cases are closed, Mack asks Sterling to leave for a while so she can sort her feelings. As she contemplates the irony of how two murders were solved because of another unrelated death, she gets a visitor. When she opens the door, she is beyond stunned to see her father standing on the stoop. Now that is the way to create interest in the next book in the series!
Your public library is full of surprises. Why not check it out this week?
AT A GLANCE
Book: Our Daughter’s Bones (Detective MacKenzie Price, Book 1)
Author: Ruhi Choudhary
Publisher: Bookouture
Year published: 2020
Number of pages: 384
Detective haunted by late mother’s crime
