The Secrets They Left Behind by Lissa Marie Redmond
There are periods in life when five years pass like a wave. One day you’re thirty-eight, the next you’re forty-three, and nothing much seems to have changed. The span between age eighteen and twenty-three is not one of those periods. Time has a way of changing speeds. That half-decade, in particular, might be the most dizzying and formative of all.
It’s that crucial entry and beginning of adulthood that guides the plot of Lissa Marie Redmond’s excellent fourth novel, The Secrets They Left Behind (Crooked Lane). After three books in her Cold Case Investigation series, the retired Buffalo homicide detective stakes out new territory with her first standalone. Her protagonist, twenty-three-year-old cop Shea O’Connor, might look young, but she’s already battle-scarred — both physically and emotionally. On a previous case, her youthful appearance proved useful, as the FBI sent her undercover to help catch a serial killer. O’Connor succeeded, though not before she almost became the killer’s next victim.
Her heroism can’t yet be celebrated, with her identity needing to remain secret until the trial, so, it’s back to her position as a disrespected beat cop with the Buffalo Police Department. That is, until the ever-manipulative FBI agent Bill Walters comes calling again. He needs her fresh-faced looks once more. Three college freshmen have disappeared from their western New York town, called Kelly’s Falls, near the Pennsylvania border.
Shea might be a world-weary twenty-three, but she can still pass as an innocent eighteen. After concocting a tragic backstory (her parents died in a car crash; she’s sent to live with her only relative, her uncle, the police chief), she embeds herself at the local community college. It doesn’t take long before she’s welcomed among the cool girls, all of whom were at the party with missing girls the night they disappeared. It also doesn’t take long for her to draw the attention of the most eligible boys in town. Being an attractive co-ed with an advanced sense of style has its advantages, no matter where you go.
But undercover work comes with slippery moral dilemmas, a thread that brings a welcome humanity to the narrative. Every genuine connection or attraction that Shea feels is weighed against the fact that she is, by definition, living a lie. The closer she gets to her friends and potential love interests, the better chance she has of learning their secrets and solving the case. It also means that betrayal is inherent to the job itself.
At some point, do all undercover officers face an identity crisis? Can they ever truly separate authentic emotions from big-picture motives? Perhaps the best ones are able to erase that line altogether. Yet, that’s probably too much to ask of a twenty-three-year-old, no matter how much trauma she’s already experienced on the force.
The author evidently turned to writing after a decorated, high-profile career as a cold-case homicide detective, and once upon a time, she must have been very much like her young protagonist — ambitious and bound for a promising career in law enforcement but torn by the moral choices every good cop must reconcile.
That makes for a weighty character with real depth. After finishing The Secrets They Left Behind, I’m hoping Redmond returns to Shea O’Connor in future books — making this more than a standalone — because this young, questioning, principled cop has all the makings of a new series character.
