Leonore (Leo) Asker, as a woman, faces the typical harassment and misogyny of many women in the police force, but unlike most other women she was trained by her prepper father to be prepared for anything and to outsmart any adversary and to protect herself no matter what. When a prominent woman goes missing an old adversary of Leo’s manages to get the powers that be to bring him back to his old dept and put him in charge of the case. Leo is supposedly given a promotion to department head, but the department is in the basement and one that Leo didn’t even know existed. It is The Dept. of Lost Souls and seems to be full of misfits and embarrassments the department wants hidden away and who have no real cases to work on. Leo is sure that everyone thinks she will get tired of exile and quit but instead she does what she does best – she finds clues, she takes advantage of the secrecy of the Dept. of Lost Souls and Causes to break a lot of rules and she uses the misfits to help conduct her own investigation. This is book 1 of the Asker series and I can’t wait to see how Leo’s training by her mentally ill “prepper” father helps her in her next case.