Trailbreaker by Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare

Trailbreaker

by Ruthie Knox

Prairie Nightingale has formally opened her detective agency with the people who helped her solve her last case and the book begins with the four of them having a multilayered, multidirectional disagreement. Since each of them are unflinching, stubborn, sometimes prickly women, they get on each other’s nerves, even as Prairie reminds herself and them not to “flatten [someone] to the most annoying aspect of [their] personality.”

Then a wealthy, iconoclastic woman walks in with a big check, a long-running blog (hey girl, hey), and a request for help with several missing persons cases in Door County, Wisconsin – cases that law enforcement says are not related. She thinks they are the work of a decades-long serial killing spree, and no one will take her seriously.

The first half of the book was a challenge; the second half was so compelling I said out loud, “I can’t right now, I have to finish my book.” (I love that no one here argues with that statement). There were a few frustrating elements to the first part, especially Prairie’s hostility and self-defeating attitude toward Foster Rosemere, the FBI agent who provides a grounding in reality for the series, and a possible romance for Prairie. Foster is at his most effective when he reminds Prairie and the rest of them that there is a point that the information they gather must be turned over to law enforcement of one flavor or another, and he can connect them with people who will actually take them seriously.

Prairie’s mercurial attitude toward Foster – a confused resentment born out of the fact that she likes him AND she has horny pants for him and does not like that combo – wears thin so fast I almost started skimming their dialogue even though I like them together very much. A lot of the time, Prairie seemed like she was inventing obstacles or reasons to be wary of Foster, when Foster hasn’t earned that treatment in the least. He’s unflinchingly honest with her, and she mentally does the hokey pokey about whether to kiss him. If you like ample progress in a multi-book slow-burn romance, you won’t find a lot of it here, but there is some.

The start of the novel is also slow, I think, because it’s a story about people learning to work together cohesively: not only Prairie and Foster, but Prairie and the other detectives, Prairie, her ex-husband, and her daughters, and Prairie and her colleagues with their new client. Even though I liked all of them, that process was dull sometimes and I found myself frustrated with the very, very slow progress.

Then the stakes of the story change midway and lend urgency to the case, so the second half goes MUCH faster than the first, and that’s when I found it very difficult to put this book down. Every character becomes essential to the whole. I am trying not to be too specific because I don’t want to spoil anything, but once the “why” behind their work changes, and even Prairie’s children get peripherally involved with their own perspectives and pattern recognition, I could not stop until the end.

I really, really liked that at its foundation, this is a story about people learning to function as a very powerful group, and about how much law enforcement often sucks at their jobs because they don’t listen to women and marginalized people. Prairie, her fellow detectives, the woman who has been the police department administrative assistant for decades, marginalized and immigrant people: they’re all pretty easy for cops to ignore if what they’re saying means more work. Prairie maintains her unique perspective on the world, on the roles given to women, and the consequences of rejecting those roles, while using everything that makes her a bit of a misfit in the service of helping other women.

If you’re thinking of reading Trailbreaker, especially if you liked Homemaker, I recommend this one, but prepare yourself for some perseverance through the first half.

– SB Sarah

Suspicions that a serial killer is terrorizing a pristine tourist spot draw a single mom and budding private investigator into a twisting and deepening mystery of secrets and murder.
Single mom and newly minted private investigator Prairie Nightingale has opened the doors of her Green Bay, Wisconsin, agency and is ready for work. She and her crew aren’t quite prepared for their first client, though: Bernie Dubicki, a notorious online journalist and not—altogether—reliable provocateur, who claims the idyllic vacation destination of nearby Door County is home to a serial killer.

She’s pinpointed four seemingly unrelated deaths that haven’t raised suspicions for anyone else. But when a college student vanishes, Bernie’s sizable retainer convinces Prairie to help connect the dots. And trusted, flirty FBI agent Foster Rosemare thinks Bernie might be onto something. Prairie never expected her first investigation to be so big—like Dateline big—but she does have an inquiring mind and a knack for seeing things no one else can.

In this case she’ll have to look deep—not only into the secrets of strangers, but into Door County’s woods—to solve a mystery decades in the making.