THE THINGS THAT LAST FOREVER

Six months ago, Detective Vic Lenoski’s 15-year-old daughter, Dannie, disappeared; around the same time, three other women, all local strippers, also vanished, and an abundance of evidence implicates their boss, Cora Stills, in a human trafficking scheme that grimly involves all four women. Vic tracks down Cora, but she sets her own house on fire before he can arrest her, forcing him to choose between saving his partner, DetectiveLiz Timmons, or apprehending the suspect; he chooses to rescue Liz, but she suffers terrible burns, and Cora successfully flees. Vic later learns that Cora grew up in North Dakota and her mother still resides there, so he heads to the state in search of new leads. However, he worries that the overall case is being mishandled. District Attorney FrankMarioni demands that someone else, an inexperienced cop, head the investigation, leading Vic to wonder if he has something to hide. Over the course of this crime novel, Hayes poignantly limns Vic’s profound heartache over Dannie’s kidnapping and the terrible toll it takes on his marriage—a relationship that he and his wife interestingly decide to put on hold until the case is solved: “Honestly, I don’t think we can find a way to be together until that’s done,” he tells his spouse. “When we get to that point, I think we can see what that means to each of us, and to us together.” As the investigation goes on, the author artfully paints a bleak tableau of the lowest depths of human nature, sometimes demonstrated by characters who are supposed to be on the side of good. The mystery plot itself is riveting; Hayes expertly guides readers from lead to lead, and they’ll find themselves fully immersed not only in the search, but also in the depiction of the protagonist’s mounting desperation.

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