Although this is Book 2 in the Columbia River series, it’s a Callahan and McLane novel, and if you haven’t read those books, you’re going to be left wondering about a lot of the background to these characters. The protagonist of pretty much every other book the author has ever written gets a cameo appearance here as Mason Callahan and Ava McLane prepare for their wedding while dealing with murders, domestic terrorism, missing family members and more.
I’m not actually sure where the title of this book comes from… it didn’t seem to have any relevance to the story - and I’m really not a fan of these crossover stories where characters from every other book make an appearance. This would be a fascinating story WITHOUT all those other appearances, because Elliot really does know how to write an intriguing procedural suspense thriller. If you’re a devotee of her work, you might well enjoy all the little Easter eggs, but I found them annoying and a bit exclusionary… like telling ‘in’ jokes newcomers won’t get. It’s one thing to need to have read the first in a series to comprehend everything that’s going on, quite another to have to read an author’s entire backlist. For that reason, though the storyline here is really good, I’m knocking this down to four stars.
Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this title via NetGalley.