#22, The Bitter Season, by Tami Hoag

Now this is more like it! Tami Hoag's The Bitter Season was a refreshing improvement on Mary Higgins Clark's The Lost Years. This apparently is the fifth in a series featuring detective Nikki Liska and her (erstwhile) partner Sam Kovac, but the first that I've read. Hoag breathes real life into her characters, especially the detectives, friend and foe, of Nikki. She weaves a 25 year old cold case with a current murder investigation quite seamlessly. I liked this so much I'll have to go back now and read the first four.