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Release date: December 18, 2018

Publisher: Kensington

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Blurb:

Not long after donning the uniform of the McCreary County Sheriff’s department in Bone Gap, Tennessee, ex-Marine Brynn Callahan faces her first official homicide. On a cold February morning, a lone cross-country skier stumbles across the mutilated body of a young woman. Sent to investigate, Brynn is shocked when she recognizes the victim as a fellow Traveller, Maura Keene.

Maura held a solid standing both within the Travellers’ insular community and among the settled townspeople—a fact that makes her murder all the more disturbing to Brynn, who also straddles the two worlds.  After her trained K-9, Wilco, digs up human bones, and then a scrap of paper scrawled with arcane Latin phrases is uncovered, Brynn finds evidence leading her to question those closest to her—and closing the case becomes a deeply personal matter.

While trying to suppress local superstitions and prejudices, Brynn discovers that Maura was keeping a dangerous secret. And as the bones Wilco found are analyzed by forensics, Brynn harbors the troubling suspicion that she knows who they belong to. Still struggling with PTSD, Brynn must put her career on the line and her life at risk to find justice for a woman not unlike herself—haunted by her past, and caught in a vicious cycle she may never
escape . . . 

Review:

This is the second book in a series, and while technically you could probably jump in at this point I think reading both books is the way to go. They’re both excellent and Furlong has done such a great job developing Brynn’s character that you would be missing out if you don’t read both!

One of the best things about this series for me is that it’s exposing me to a totally new culture that I know very little about. Brynn is an Irish Traveller, a small and close knit community that she’s never quite fit into, but never more so than now. IT don’t really trust “settled folk” and they really don’t trust police officers making Brynn a double threat in their eyes and the fact that one of their own was murdered just brings the tension to a whole new level. While Brynn has plenty to deal with at work, her personal life is a hot mess as well, she is totally flawed and incredibly fascinating, there’s a complexity to her that draws me in.

The mystery itself is solid, there’s a very us versus them mentality between the IT and the rest of the community that leads to infighting and hostility making for a tense, engaging read. Recommended for anyone looking for something different, I haven’t read anything else like it before and Furlong is a fantastic writer.

Fractured Silence in three words: Unexpected, Engaging and Tense.

Overall rating: 4/5

Thanks to the author for my review copy.