Thank you NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for the copy of Hide by Tracy Clark. This was a good but uneven read for me. It started out great but then I started to lose interest. It picked up again, and then I started to lose interest again. It was almost as if a new author jumped in and wrote a chapter every so often. I liked the story, and Foster is going to be a great ongoing main character with a huge capacity to grow. I hope her police work improves - near the end she is woefully unprepared and doesn’t follow any police procedure I have ever heard of, so I was rolling my eyes. I will check out the next book in the series to see what Foster is up to next! 3.5 stars rounded up to 4 because this series really has potential.

~3.75 stars

A fast-paced read that serves as a solid start to a detective series. We follow Detective Foster, who is a troubled but dedicated detective, as she works to catch a serial killer terrorizing Chicago.

Overall, I enjoyed this! It was well-paced, well-written, and examined a lot of social issues in a nuanced and thought-provoking manner. This, in my opinion, was the best part of the book!

While I enjoyed the mystery aspect, I did find the “twist” of the killer’s identity pretty obvious. This could be due to the formulaic nature of police procedurals, or the fact that I’ve read/watched SO many haha

I definitely recommend checking this out if you’re a fan of the genre, or want a mystery that series in on some contemporary social issues.

Thanks to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for allowing me to read this!

I'm so excited to have a new series to read! I loved the characters in this one and found them to be so interesting- I can't wait to read more in the series. This case was perplexing and twisty. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this one and read it in a day- I was riveted!

Oh yes!!! I’ve been needing a book like this! Hide by Tracy Clark just sucked me in from the beginning. I loved reading Harriet Foster’s return to work after a deeply impactful loss in her life. The character growth in this book made me want to read it. Plus, Detective Foster’s handling of overt sexism and racism from the “Old Guard” at the precinct was fantastic to read! I loved her boss with her no nonsense attitude and I enjoyed the mixup of partners from arrogant, presumptuous white man to a female detective with great intuition, a strong voice, and the willingness to take Foster as she is and nudge her along slowly but surely.

This book is currently available on KIndle Unlimited and I highly recommend you read it! I am now excited to read previous novels by Tracy Clark. I already downloaded Broken Places to read next!

Thank you for granting me access to this book Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley!

Chicago Homicide detective Harriet Foster has gone through a lot. She has lost a son to senseless violence & her longtime partner recently committed suicide. Needing a change, Harriet has been assigned a new posting & the worst partner. They soon get their first case & it's a doozy. A young red-headed woman is found dead in downtown Chicago. A possible suspect is arrested near the scene but Harriet is convinced there is more to the murder. When a second body is found, Harriet & her colleagues realize they are hunting a serial killer. Bodie Morgan is a troubled man obsessed with red-headed females. He has been released from a psych assessment & his artist sister is working to keep him in check.

This was a tightly plotted, thrilling read and the start of a fine new series.

A great, thrilling read, which will keep you entertained throughout. A good one sitting read, get the nibbles ready, close the door, and read!

Good book! Wow! Talk about a creepy family lol this book had a bit of everything! It had suspense, action, intrigue, murder, serial killers, A great who done it and great police work! The storyline was very interesting and had me glued to my Kindle! I will definitely recommend reading this book as it was well worth reading! Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for sharing this book with me!

Always excited about a new Tracy Clark novel, especially a new woman detective to follow. Although my first love is Cass Raines and I still hope we see more from that series, I'm excited about this new route.

Hide features Harriet Foster, a seasoned detective starting in a new precinct hoping for a fresh start after the death of her partner. Her first case out sends her on the hunt for a serial killer. I wish I could say I enjoyed this one. For me, it was a bit slow. I am not a fan in general of the "tortured detective". Harriet just had too much happen to her before the book even got started. Her partner killed herself, her son died and she was divorced. I mean how much can happen to one person? The msytery was fine. But I just wasn't a fan of the characters. Not enough to read the next book. However, just because it wasn't for me, doesn't mean it won't be for you. Give it a try.

🏙️ 𝗕𝗢𝗢𝗞 𝗧𝗢𝗨𝗥 🏙️

𝗛𝗶𝗱𝗲
𝗕𝘆 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘆 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗸
𝟯𝟳𝟳 𝗽𝗮𝗴𝗲𝘀
𝗣𝘂𝗯: 𝗝𝗮𝗻 𝟭, 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯 -- coming soon!

Wow!!! I need only one word to describe this book: Un-freaking-putdownable!! I binged this book in one day. I LOVE books that keep me guessing, and this was quite the puzzle! I equally enjoyed the relationships and work dynamic between Harri and her fellow detectives (I suspect we'll be seeing much more of them in future books). Clark writes such complex characters with oodles of depth and personality. I loved every second of these characters and riding along with them on this mystery.

I've definitely found a new autobuy author in Tracy Clark. This police procedural is book one of the Harriet Foster series, and I will absolutely be continuing this series! This one is perfect for fans of Karin Slaughter and Lisa Gardner.

Huge thanks to @tlcbooktours @amazonpublishing and @tpclark2000 for my gifted copy in exchange for my honest review.
.
.
.
.

When we first meet Harriet Foster, we know two things. She’s a Chicago cop, and she’s a survivor. And at the moment, the one is inextricably linked to the other, both in the sense that it’s being a cop that gives her the tenacity to keep on living, and it’s being a cop that makes it necessary to have that sheer, driven stubbornness in the first place.

It’s late in the fall, it’s Chicago, it’s cold, and she’s having a damn hard time getting herself across the threshold of her new precinct. She’s just back from eight weeks leave after the senseless killing of her son, the subsequent death of her marriage and the suicide of her police partner in the parking lot of her previous precinct.

She’s thrown right into the deep end as soon as she gets through the door. Her new ‘partner’ is the department’s hard case, and they’ve just caught one. A naked, dead, butchered woman badly hidden under a pile of leaves in a park just off the Riverwalk.

It’s a spectacular mess, the scene is already a spectacle, and the lookie-loos and media are already out in force right along with CPD. Her partner is just so sure that the killer is the young black man who was found sleeping nearby with a single bloodstain on his lapel. Harriet is pretty sure it wasn’t him, because if he’d been the murderer there’d be way more than a single bloodstain on his clothes. He’d be drenched in the stuff.

And she’s certainly unwilling to rush to any judgment. Not just because the young man is the same age as her dead son. Harriet Foster just isn’t the kind of cop who rushes to judgment – even on her worst day.

Which this is already shaping up to be. Worst day, worst week, worst month, worst case. Someone is out there eviscerating redheads, managing to stay just one step ahead of the cops. The news media are baying for somebody’s blood and City Hall is looking for a scapegoat.

But Harriet Foster keeps putting one step in front of the other, one long day and even longer night after the other, using the frustrations of the case to keep her own demons at bay. In the end, she’ll at least have put one monster to rest – even if it’s not one of her own.

Escape Rating A+: This one absolutely had me from the very first page. While some of that was because I can still see most of the settings in my head, it was mostly because of Harriet Foster herself. She’s trapped like an insect in amber, still processing – slowly and badly – her recent losses and hoping that something in going back to the job is going to get her through the day and the one after that and the one after that.

At the same time, she is exactly the kind of protagonist that I read mysteries for, in that she’s questioning and human and oh-so-capable all at the same time. It’s so clear that she hasn’t remotely got her life figured out, but once the case begins she’s all there for it.

That she’s experienced enough to know when to push back on a shit-talking so-called partner and when to suck it up and stand in solidarity with the rest of the cops in her new cop shop just felt right.

And then there’s the case, which is just the type of twisted, humdinger that reminded me so much of the kind of case that Eve Dallas ends up trying to unravel in the In Death series. The bodies are gruesome, the clues are few, the perpetrator is clever and the media vultures are circling.

At the same time, we have alternating perspectives from people who might, or might not, be involved in the mess, from childhood memories of a murderous daddy to adult children trying to pretend they’re normal to a rogue psychologist looking for her next star psychopath. They bring both perspective and confusion to the mystery, allowing the real perpetrator to hide in plain sight.

As much as the case reminded me of many in the In Death series, Harriet Foster only resembles Dallas in her dogged determination to solve the mystery and put the guilty party either away or under. There’s no romance even hinted at here and there shouldn’t be. Harriet’s personal story is about her determination to find a way forward and to spot the light at the end of her personal tunnel of grief. She’s far from there yet, which bodes well for future entries in the series.

What we have in Hide is a case of one person unraveling, and one person, well, raveling. When the murderer starts coming apart, their descent is swift and sprays lots of collateral damage. Harriet Foster, on the other hand, is oh-so-slowly raveling herself back together, one day, one clue, and one paper clip at a time. And her progress, both on the case and on herself, is utterly absorbing to watch.

Hide is the first book in what looks to be a compelling mystery suspense series. While it isn’t officially out until January 1, it is available NOW to Amazon Prime members as one of the Amazon First Reads books this month. So if you are as impatient to read it as I was there is a way to get it this month.

The second book in the series, Fall, will be out one year from now. And I can’t wait to see how and what Harriet will be doing next winter. In the meantime, if you’re on the hunt for a series with a similar vibe, take a look at Harriet’s British counterpart, Inspector Anjelica Henley, solving the case of The Jigsaw Man.

From the first the beginning, I was immediately immersed in all aspect of this well-written and grippingly complex drama that consumed all my reading time. The author set the stage in this police procedural with a dastardly and wicked crime and the search for the person responsible, and once they narrowed down the pool of suspects, it was game on, in their determination to figure out who was doing what to whom. The ins and outs of the police investigation and the clues they gathered kept me on my toes and a few of those strategically placed red herrings enhanced how well this story was being told. I did enjoy detective Harriet’s assimilation into her new department and the team, which made her stronger to deal with her personal demons. A twisted and riveting narrative that ricocheted up a notch as the drama came to an adrenaline-charged conclusion. This is another example of brilliance from this amazing author.