She Treads Softly: Buried

Monday, July 15, 2019

Buried

Buried by Ellison Cooper
St. Martin's: 7/16/19
eBook review copy; 368 pages
ISBN-13: 9781250173867

Buried by Ellison Cooper is a highly recommended investigative thriller and a sequel to 2018’s Caged.

Max Cho, an off-duty FBI agent and his K9 Kona find a sinkhole filled with human bones in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park. FBI Senior Special Agent Sayer Altair is called back into the field to investigate. Sayer has been off-duty recovering from a gunshot wound when she exposed a killer within the FBI, resulting in personal attacks and a huge investigation. As a neuroscientist Sayer has been studying psychopaths. She never expected to find one in the FBI and now she is on the trail of another one.

The bones in the sinkhole vary widely in their age, but there are two bodies in there are recent, so Sayer knows she has an active dump sight of a serial killer. The recent victims were women who were kidnapped, and there are clues that point to more victims to follow. The killer, though, must be watching them because their team has been attacked. While trying to solve the current case, the congressional investigation of the FBI is ongoing and the media is swarming.

This is obviously a sequel and I do wish I had read Caged first before jumping into Buried. While I stilled enjoyed this second book, I felt I was missing some key elements. Even so, the story is compelling and I was engrossed in reading it as fast as possible. There is plenty of action and investigative threads to follow. The descriptive writing kept me glued to the pages as the crime is investigated and solved. The plot is complex and Cooper excels at keeping the anticipation high.

Sayer is a great character and I liked her quite a bit (even though I feel like I would have reacted even more if I had read the first book). All the characters are well developed and interesting. This seems like a great series to continue following. Yes, some of the plot elements are predictable, but the presentation is still engaging and made for some great escapism while following an intense plot.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of St. Martin's

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.