A good and gritty mystery, tying two missing and eventually dead teens together. Add in a sub-plot about the main detective's marital problems and difficulties getting respect from peers and tough guys on the street, plus a neat twist at the end in terms of the perp, and you close the cover with a satisfies sigh. ( )

Land of Shadows is the 1st book in the Detective Elouise Norton series. I've read two of this authors books previously (both standalones) and enjoyed them so much that I knew that I wanted to dive into her backlist. I'm really glad that I did because I enjoyed this book a lot. Lou's character is one that I instantly liked. She didn't take crap from anyone and knew that she was good at her job for a lot of different reasons. I love a mystery series focused on a strong female lead detective - this is like my reading catnip. Lou has a darker past though because years ago her sister went missing and she still doesn't have the answers she has been searching for. Then she gets assigned to this case and it seems like the two cases are tied together even though her sister went missing so long ago. This book was a definite page turner! I found myself really hooked by the premise and the way that this book was set up. Parts of the book were set in the past leading up to Lou's sister's disappearance and then the other parts of the book were focused on Lou's current investigation. I had no idea where it was all going and I couldn't stop reading as I just had to find out. My one complaint with this book was there was a bit of inappropriate language (I really don't know how else to explain it). This is an older book - it was published back in 2014 - so maybe it wasn't considered offensive back then but I did want to mention it. One of the things that this book did so well though is that it made me sit back and think. The author makes a point of looking at the reasons why the police didn't really look into her sister's disappearance that closely - it's a poignant look at how differently these types of case are treated when it is a girl of woman of color that goes missing. I definitely will be continuing on with this series. Rachel Howzell Hall is an author not to be missed!

Bottom Line: A really solid beginning to this new to me mystery series!

CW: Suicide, murder, cheating, derogatory language, loss of a child, death

Disclosure: I checked this book out from my local library. Honest thoughts are my own. ( )

Thoroughly enjoyed meeting Eloiusa Norton, a tough LA homicide detective. When working on a murder of a teenager whose case bears great similarities to that of her older sister who had disappeared when Elouisa was only twelve, she deals with a new young white partner and the absence of her game designer husband.

I was looking for a new police procedural series to read and a friend recommended the Detective Elouise Norton series by Rachel Howzell Hall. This is the first of the, thus-far, four-book series.

Elouise (Lou) is an African-American LAPD homicide detective. She and her new partner Colin Taggert, a recent transfer from Colorado, investigate the death of 17-year-old Monique Darson who is found hanging in an unfinished condo complex. The complex is being built by Napoleon Crase, a man Lou suspects in the disappearance of her own sister thirty years earlier. Can Lou investigate the Darson case without bias? Can she find out the truth behind her sister’s disappearance?

Lou is the first-person narrator so we gather information as she does. The only advantage the reader has is some chapters told by the anonymous killer. Those chapters do give some clues, though mostly they suggest who he isn’t.

What will motivate me to return to the series is the character of Lou Norton. She is intelligent and high-spirited. She is told that on the street she is known as Lockjaw because “’Once you’re on a case, you don’t let go.’” Lou describes herself as “’sweet as apple pie’” but a colleague qualifies that description: “’Apple pie laced with arsenic and rusty razor blades.” She is respected by her colleagues because she is good at her job: “Not to brag, but I had solved 90 percent of the investigations I had led. Pretty good for a girl.’” Lou’s troubled relationship with her husband adds a personal subplot that will undoubtedly be developed further.

I especially love Lou’s irreverent sense of humour. She brags, “I could spot a fake Chanel handbag quicker than I could spot a hooker on fire.” She mocks her partner who concludes a suspect is a drug dealer with such certainty that “he folded his arms and nodded as though he’d just discovered Presbyterians on Uranus.” She mocks herself: “I was sweating like Kobe Bryant in Game 7 of the NBA finals against the Celtics and my reserve tank of patience had only three drops left.” She mocks witnesses who are not forthcoming, calling one a “’goddamned dingleberry’”, later explaining that a dingleberry is “’a piece of poop that sticks to ass hair.’”

I did have difficulty with some of the slang. For example, “strawberry” and “twink” and “chickenhead” had me checking a slang dictionary. There are numerous pop culture references; for instance, Lou tells one suspect, “’This ain’t a TV show and you ain’t Stringer Bell, so stop with the bad-ass-thug routine. You’re from Carson, son.’” An older man will be described as “’old enough to remember the last episode of M*A*S*H” or as someone who hasn’t smiled “since Cheers went off the air.” Some of the rap and hip hop references left me lost (KRS-One and Chuck D), and “Doin’ the Dougie”, meant nothing to me until I consulted Google.

I will definitely be checking out the other books in the series.

Note: Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski). ( )

I really liked Elouise Norton. Smart cop, but lots of baggage. ( )