helped get him out of prison. Unfortunately, he actually was guilty, and Tracy was forced to kill him.

In the present day, House is long dead, but his former cellmate, Erik Schmidt, also a murderer, is out of jail and vows revenge on Tracy for killing House. After his recent arrest for murdering two women, Schmidt was released due to the proverbial “technicality.” As A Dead Draw begins, Tracy isn’t at her best mentally, having bouts of PTSD featuring images of House and Schmidt. So, she takes her husband and young daughter and moves back temporarily to her hometown of Cedar Grove to give herself time to recover. Because Schmidt is a former Army sniper and prize shooter, Tracy also embarks on a crash course to refine her own badly shaken marksmanship skills.

In Cedar Grove, Tracy reunites with various people from her past, including the current sheriff and the retired former sheriff. She also seeks help from her former shooting instructor. Because of his age and infirmity, he can’t provide Tracy with much help, so he introduces her to Lydia, his college-age autistic granddaughter. Lydia is by far the liveliest and most interesting character in A Dead Draw. The author has studied the mannerisms of people on the autism spectrum. Lydia’s unfiltered speech, although it sounds at times like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, is bright and refreshing. Not surprisingly, she and Tracy soon bond. Lydia is also an expert at first-person shooting video games and begins teaching Tracy how to play. Tracy’s resulting improved reflexes soon helped her in actual shooting practice.

The last quarter of A Dead Draw is a mix of action and suspense, as Tracy must climb a treacherous mountain path in bad weather to meet Schmidt. This change of pace transforms the novel from a traditional police procedural to a well-crafted action thriller. The author does a good job of recreating Tracy’s hazardous nighttime journey to meet Schmidt. (Her husband, Dan, also figures out where she’s heading and takes a different path to meet and help her.) The author then throws in a twist towards the end that’s relatively easy to guess, but very satisfying nonetheless.

I was impressed by the author’s skillful characterizations of some troubled characters. Lydia seems like a real person, and Tracy’s stress-related difficulties, which led her to Cedar Grove in the first place, are presented clearly but not in an overly sensational manner. Dugoni also explores Schmidt’s twisted psyche, showing how he turned from an exemplary soldier into a serial killer.

The author also provides a historical perspective of the events in the novel. The fictional Cedar Grove and another nearby town, Silver Pines, were once old mining towns in the Cascade Mountains, dating back over a century. Tracy eventually researches the town’s past and discovers some dark deeds and double-crosses. These findings aren’t just interesting from a historical perspective. (The author’s familiarity with the mining towns of the region gives this material a highly authentic feel.) They also help explain some characters’ motivations and actions.

Although there’s a lot to like in A Dead Draw, the book has some nagging problems as well. The exclusionary rule has been established as black-letter law for over half a century, not, as the author implies, a loophole that shady defense lawyers sometimes exploit. Here, the police neglected to confirm the ballistics match that connected Schmidt to the two murdered women, as required by state law. This was gross negligence (although the author explains how it happened in a manner that makes the error somewhat more understandable). Also, the author provides an overly detailed and simplistic discussion of the exclusionary hearing that’s held. Experienced attorneys and judges would never talk to each other the way they do in the book.

A Dead Draw has a more fundamental flaw, one that completely took me out of the story for a few chapters. Tracy is supposed to be an expert detective. However, when she asks some of the Cedar Grove locals, including her husband, about a mysterious stranger who shows up asking a lot of questions, she neglects to show any of them Schmidt’s mug shot. That elementary blunder conceals Schmidt’s presence in Cedar Grove from Tracy and alters how the last quarter of the book unfolds. Schmidt would never have gotten as far as he did if Tracy had been aware of his presence earlier.

 A Dead Draw is mostly a taut, exciting thriller with engaging characters and an intriguing premise. Robert Dugoni takes advantage of extensive research and his own experiences to enhance the story’s realistic feel, despite its far-fetched premise. The author allows the book to run on a couple of chapters too long after the climactic showdown, but the buildup and presentation of that encounter would make for a highly entertaining movie or TV show. I haven’t read any previous Crosswhite novels, so I don’t know how this book ranks among them. However, based on A Dead Draw, I’m willing to saddle up with Tracy Crosswhite in the future.

NOTE: The publisher graciously provided me with a copy of this book through NetGalley. However, the decision to review the book and the contents of this review are entirely my own.