Moonlight dances across her bare skin, and a shooting star flies across the sky. And while the young woman’s eyes are open and facing upward, they no longer see anything…
Detective Madison Knight is about to get married when detectives from a neighboring city storm the wedding and arrest her fiancé, Troy Matthews. He’s being charged for the murder of his childhood friend Dylan Graham, recently shot to death in his home. But the motive dates back to a fateful night from twenty-four years ago when seventeen-year-old Emily Kane was raped and strangled at a beach party.
Police claim that Dylan had plans to expose Troy for the crime even though another friend was convicted for it and sent to prison for twenty-four years. With that friend recently released, Madison suspects that he may be framing Troy to take the fall, some sort of vengeance for not saving him from going to prison. But when he also turns up murdered, Troy again becomes the prime suspect.
With evidence mounting against him, Madison is determined to prove her fiancé is innocent, but what troubles her the most is that all of Troy’s friends from that time are being picked off one by one. That means Troy might be the killer’s next target, but it’s not just his life on the line when she discovers the twisted killer is stalking her.
A decades-old murder case resurfaces with more questions than answers in Arnold’s mystery, the 13th entry in a long-running series.
This latest entry in the author’s Madison Knight series characteristically begins with a crime—in this case, it’s the horrific rape and murder of teenage Emily Kane at a high school senior-class beach party by someone she knew (“As her brain screamed for oxygen, the spinning in her head began to slow. This is how I die!”). Fast-forward 24 years to the newly discovered corpse of Kane’s former classmate, 41-year-old Dylan Graham, found in his home next to a handwritten suicide note, computer printouts about Kane’s murder, and an accusatory diary entry pointing to classmate Troy Matthews as the girl’s real killer. Veteran Braybury police detective Carson Snow reopens the case and apprehends Matthews—who is a fellow officer—on the day of his wedding to police detective Madison Knight. Knight is immediately spurred into action to both solve Emily’s murder and absolve her fiance. With his bail posted, Knight gets to work sifting through clues and crime-scene evidence while the novel fills in some critical backstory by revisiting the night in question and the hard-partying group of teenagers (who all believed that Richie Klein, the boy who was eventually convicted of Emily’s murder, was actually innocent). Klein’s recent release from jail could afford him the opportunity for revenge against his boyhood friend, Troy. As Troy’s sister Andrea (the local police chief) and Detective Snow desperately investigate the crime, Madison’s faith in her fiance’s innocence never wavers. Arnold’s grasp of police-procedural conventions is assured. The mystery opens with a murder, and all of the primary players immediately fall into position with a few hairpin turns, conveyed in short, crisply written chapters that lead to a satisfying resolution. While this installment can be read as a stand-alone entry, readers new to the Madison Knight mystery series may want to backtrack several books to become familiar with the recurring cast of characters. Arnold has mastered the recipe for an engrossing, rousing, and ultimately gratifying mystery, and this installment is no exception.
A brisk and appealingly twisty mystery, reliably anchored by the series’ resilient lead.
