Bad Liar

July 8, 2024
Det. Annie Broussard and Lt. Nick Fourcade return in Hoag’s gripping third case for the Partout Parish, La., investigative duo (after The Boy). At the outset, Nick responds to a call about the discovery of a body in a rural, marshy area, with a face so pulverized it’s nearly impossible to identify the victim. Annie, meanwhile, returns to the sheriff’s office after recovering from PTSD and a concussion she sustained during a previous investigation, and immediately encounters a distraught woman named B’Lynn Fontenot. B’Lynn’s son, Robby, has gone missing in the nearby town of Bayou Breaux, but police there refuse to take his disappearance seriously given his history of drug use. B’Lynn is certain that Robby’s kicked the habit, and Annie agrees to investigate. She links up with Nick to determine whether the body in the marsh might be Robby, or if it’s Marc Mercier, a well-liked local businessman who’s recently gone missing. Hoag sketches Robby, Marc, and B’Lynn with remarkable depth and sensitivity, and keeps the plot moving at a brisk clip through many twists and turns. This will please series fans and newcomers alike. Agent: Andrea Cirillo, Jane Rotrosen Agency.

August 1, 2024
Third in a series--afterA Thin Dark Line (1997) andThe Boy (2018)--featuring a pair of married detectives in Louisiana. A body lies on the bank of a bayou, his face and hands obliterated by a shotgun blast. He has no ID. Why, police wonder, didn't the killer use any of the countless places one might dump the body forever in the alligator-infested swamps of the south Louisiana French Triangle? Then at the local sheriff's office, B'Lynn Fontenot makes a frantic scene because no one will look for her missing adult son. But Det. Antoinette "Annie" Broussard listens with compassion and promises to investigate the young man's fate, for better or worse. Is he the homicide victim? DNA testing will take time. Meanwhile, Annie muses that "B'Lynn could hold onto a sliver of hope, and the thing about slivers was that they were usually painful and often left a scar." Then a second man is reported missing, and the Partout Parish sheriff's office gets busy. A former high school football star had become hooked on painkillers years earlier after a 350-pound kid landed on him during practice. Was it an accident? That's part of the gripping plot that opens a window into Cajun culture. Lt. Nick Fourcade leads a division of several detectives that includes Annie, who's his wife. She's just returned to work after having been badly hurt on the job, and he'd like her to take it easy. But "when trouble comes calling, you are seldom out of earshot," he says. Nick and Annie are a well-matched pair both professionally and maritally, and they are decent, loyal, and tough. Spousal abuse, drug addiction, jealousy, and revenge cloud the lives of victims and suspects alike while characters like Nick pepper their dialogue with a Cajun patois: a fool is a couillon, a runt is a pischouette. Nick is far more endearing to Annie, whom he privately calls 'Toinette. Hoag is a terrific crime writer, but readers have had to wait long stretches to catch up with Nick and Annie: It's been six years since book no. 2 and it was 21 years before that. Maybe Hoag will lessen the gap next time. Anyway, the ending just might make a reader's eyes well up. C'est vrai. A gripping crime yarn from one of the best.

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Starred review from August 1, 2024
Husband-and-wife cop team Annie Broussard and Nick Fourcade (last seen in The Boy, 2018) are each dealing with a difficult case. Nick is trying to identify a dead man dumped on a remote country road with his face blown off. Annie's got double duty: supporting Tulsie Parcelle, who's regularly abused by her husband, and hunting for Robbie Fontenot, a recovering addict who's gone missing. Decades ago, Robbie was star quarterback for his high-school football team, but when teammate Dozer Cormier ploughed into him, Robbie's leg was horribly damaged, his football career ended, and he became addicted to painkillers. Robbie's quarterback position went to Marc Mercier, who led his team to the championship, got a full scholarship to Tulane, and escaped his poverty-stricken background. Decades later, Marc--known as the local glamour boy--is back home to help run the family scrap business. Nick and Annie soon discover disturbing links between their cases and uncover a long-buried secret that has stunning current-day consequences. Hoag perfectly captures the Cajun dialect and way of life, the dark, steamy atmosphere of the Louisiana bayous, the claustrophobia of small-town life, lost dreams, dashed hopes, and tragic lives in this five-star read with a powerful, sucker-punch ending.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.