Lief does it again. Mac MacLeary leaves the Maplewood police department and takes an executive position at a security company. Karen Schaeffer is Mac’s old partner and new wife and they live in New York City with their son Ben. One night, Mac gets the phone call every son fears with an added surprise—his parents, Hugh and Aileen—were found in their home in Bronxville just outside the city dead; murdered. Police say it was a botched home invasion…a blood bath.

After the funeral Mac and Karin’s lives change forever. One morning on his way to work, Mac disappears. Things quickly go from bad to worse when Karin befriends a woman named Jasmine who works with her mother. Jasmine decides she wants to spend her birthday in Miami under a palm tree drinking Blue Devils. Karin doesn’t want her to spend her birthday alone and surprises her by joining her there.

While waiting for Jasmine’s plane to land, Karin can’t believe her eyes…if she hadn’t known better, she would swear her husband Mac was walking across the Miami Airport. He doesn’t respond to her yelling his name so she immediately wonders if she is hallucinating or if he is indeed alive.

After hiring a P.I., she gets a photograph of him with another woman and immediately thinks the worst. Before long, she is thrown waist deep into a drug cartel, a jealous ex, an illegitimate son and countless, hired, drugged-up lackey’s do to the bidding of a bitter woman who wants nothing more than to see Mac and everything he covets, destroyed.

There’s a lot that goes on in this story and every twist and turn brings you closer to the brink of madness and the real story behind the murders of the MacLeary’s and Mac’s “death”. An awesome read, but I expect nothing less of Lief.

Reviewed by Terri Ann Armstrong, author of “Morning Menace” and Executive Editor for Suspense Magazine