Book six in the D.I. Kim Stone series finds Kim having to work without her team and with a previous partner/friend with whom she shares a strained and volatile relationship.

Bones are discovered at an archaeological dig which indicate horrific injuries and multiple victims. As she digs into the past and the backgrounds of the families in the area, she begins to uncover legacies of racism and hate crimes.

While Marsons is brilliant at juggling
multiple storylines seamlessly and connecting the dots, she is also a master at imbuing humanity and emotion into her main characters. We see growth here in just about every character on the page, we see misassumptions corrected, we see glimpses into the past of some characters’ lives that help explain their current makeup, and we see the unmitigated cruelty and evil of racism and how it insidiously weaves its way through generation and by example.

Marsons doesn’t shy away from the hard truths, and there are scenes here that are horrific and heartbreaking to read. But her ugly accuracies of evil are somewhat balanced by the hearts of her strong, determined and unflinching good guys.

This series is entertaining and suspenseful while also being thought provoking and deeply felt. Exactly the combination of what I look for in a great series.