Rain Christiansen is settling into married life with fellow cold case detective, Daniel McKenna, and life is good. Better than good, even. But when it comes to the topic of expanding their family, Rain isn’t so sure he’s ready. Yes, a new addition could enrich their lives. But it could also tear down the delicate balance they’ve worked so hard to achieve. Do they really want to take that risk?

He’d love to brood over that a little more, but murder never takes a day off. A decade-old mystery of the missing Parker family is heating up. Most seem to think the Parkers pulled a disappearing act to get out of financial debt. It isn’t before the PTU finds out the reality is far grimmer than that. It seems that Quinn stumbled upon something better left hidden. Now that Rain has stumbled upon it, too, he has to be careful that he doesn’t meet the same fate.

Sometimes it amazes him how far he’s come from strait-laced FBI agent who couldn’t admit—even to himself—that he saw ghosts. He’s done the work, learning to get some measure of control of his paranormal side. And while his relationship with ghosts may not be perfect, it’s evolved into something symbiotic… which is a very good thing. Because in order to protect himself from the living, he might need a little help from the dead.

Review:

Dear S.E. Harmon,

I did not expect to see book five about two characters who will always have a fond place in my heart, but when I did, I grabbed it right  away.

Readers since this is a book five in the series, I do not recommend starting the series here, because you will miss a lot of the character development not just for Rain and Danny, but for a couple of the secondary characters as well. And Rain and Danny have been through a whole lot by now, so them being sweet and funny and *together* was really a pleasure. Granted, I have serious doubts about one more book like that with almost no internal conflict between them, but this was lovely.

I mean there was Rain not sure about him wanting to be a parent, and Danny being *really* sure, but to me it was not a real conflict in a sense that it did not cause any rift between the characters. It made sense Rain feeling that way, it felt real based on who he was, but he seemed to realize pretty fast that he does want the adoption to happen.

I think the main reason why I thought Danny and Rain making sweet (and Rain’s were on the sarcastic side as well) comments to each other and having hot sex so often worked because it counter balanced a really dark and ambiguous mystery storyline. Until the investigators zeroed in on at least where the killings were happening, I had no idea. When the “how” the Parker family was murdered (but not why yet) was revealed I was so confused as to why and I very much did not expect that the first murder had happened that way. I thought the mystery storyline was really good and the extension of Danny and Rain’s family was really nicely done too.

I just wrote above that the mystery storyline was ambiguous, but honestly the more I am thinking about it, to me it really was not, but it is really hard to explain why without spoilers. Let me just say that the murderers seemed to be convinced that they were doing a good thing and helping people to get justice.

Fine, I mean, I am very much on the side that one cannot be judge, jury and executioner in the real life, but sure I can understand the motivation in a fictional story. But it seemed to me that the whole thing for certain people just became a Pet project and it did not matter who would get hurt in the process, because seriously some really, really innocent people got hurt in the process, so I cheered at the end without any reservations.

And yes, the epilogue had an unexpected surprise and it was lovely.

Grade: B