It is quite classical in its development, and I like it, but I miss some more cynicism from Rockfish's part, due to his profession . The subplot does not develop, it is just the trigger; I would have liked it to be accomplished. ( )

New Jersey has really hosted a run of excellent (and humorous) crime thrillers in the past year. The latest example is Ken Harris’s high-octane thriller, in which investigator Steve Rockfish tackles a series of 1943 crimes in a rural southern New Jersey community. The healthy young men were going to war, and they left behind quite a few pregnant girlfriends. Unfortunately, many families considered pregnant unmarried daughters an embarrassment, sent them away, kept them out of sight, or even cut them off completely. If they and their babies disappeared, that may have seemed like the best outcome. Only one local police officer, Edward McGee, persisted in , investigating these disappearances, and, when he disappeared too, the questions stopped.
This chilling history lesson is the prologue of The Pine Barrens Stratagem. From that point, the story fast-forwards to 2020. An unlikely crusader for justice—a Los Angeles-based true crime podcaster named Angel Davenport—hears tantalizing threads of this story and decides it could be his ticket to a lucrative, high-profile Netflix television series.
Temperamentally allergic to hard work, not to mention being located 2700 miles from the scene of action and in pandemic lockdown, Davenport hires Baltimore’s Steve Rockfish to pursue the case. It could be murder, it could be child trafficking, it could be both. At least Davenport’s dramatic instincts are correct: it has all the makings of a compelling story.
Rockfish has something of a drinking problem—a trait he shares with the man who hired him—but it turns out he’s a good investigator, and it’s entertaining to see him smoothly work the system, talking his way into places to conduct interviews and making allies as well as enemies as his investigation proceeds. He has a wicked sense of humor (there’s a coarseness in the early part of the book that mostly disappears as the story goes along) and locks onto the politics of the people he meets, using their prejudices against them. They never realize what he’s doing, but I was laughing.
He teams up with Jawnie McGee, great-granddaughter of the long-ago missing and presumed dead policeman, who turns out to be an excellent partner. Naturally, it’s not all smooth sailing for this pair. Lots of people have a stake in keeping the lid on those long ago events—the local cops, the Mafia, the Catholic Church. Will Steve and Jawnie be able to evade them all?
Harris is a retiree from more than three decades as a cybersecurity executive with the FB, and his affection for his home state of New Jersey shines through. An epilogue reveals this is the first of a series. A sequel is expected in July. ( )

Disclosure: I got this ebook as an advanced reader copy (ARC) for free from LibraryThing in exchange for an honest review. Nobody read a copy of this review before it went public. There are no spoilers in this review.

Such a great book that were there days where I didn't want to put it down. Ken is just the right guy to write this book as he retired from the FBI as a cybersecurity executive.

There are a couple of a very harsh and quick transition in the book that made me pause for a moment and think before continuing on.

When you read the prologue you may wonder why this is included, and there is a good reason for it as it does relate to the main story at hand. And when these stories do relate it was a HOLY SHIT moment for me. They don't include an exact time frame so you can't know exactly when this happening.

There were parts of this book that I found to be boring and almost wanted to skip right past them but by reading it lead up to some action and drama happening.

There are a number of times when it feels like the character is going right into a trap, which tells you that the author has a great way with words.

From the beginning it almost seemed like there were multiple stories and you can't tell how they relate to each other, and the author doesn't explicitly mention how they connect so you will have to make the connection yourself.

There was at least once when reading that I thought the story was starting to come to a close, but then something happens which made me want to keep reading.

There's always a good and bad person in every book, and in this book sometimes the role of good or bad may switch. I want to give more on how and why this happens but that would spoil part of the book.

The book ends in a way that allows for there to be a second book in the series, and I hope that happens, and would love to see how the author continues it.

"But it's best if we only dwell on what we can control. That means no worrying or playing the couldna, wouldna, shoulda game." ( )