This book is set in the year 1985, and it's about four grade five children who discover a dead woman in the woods just outside of their school. It ends up being the work of a serial killer and after a few chapters of discussion, the local Oak Knoll, CA, sheriff's department calls in an FBI profiler. Of course, this being 1985, profilers were a new animal in behavioural science.

The profiler called to work this case is technically on leave, but he happens to be in the office when this case gets called in, and since it interests him, he goes to California to investigate who keeps kidnapping women, super-gluing their mouths and eyes closed, and breaking their eardrums, before killing them and burying them.

Other than, of course, the mystery itself, the book revolves around the teacher of the students who discovered the body. Anne Navarre has only been teaching for five years, but because she attempted a graduated programme in child psych, the school at which she teaches (and the law enforcement authorities) rely on her to get information from the children and to provide gap-stop counselling to them in the immediate aftermath of the discovery.

While I liked the character development of the children and Anne, I hated the character of the profiler. And I really despised the relationship between Anne and her father. It just seemed too dissonant from all of her other relationships.

This book also reminded me why I stopped Hoag's books several years ago. She lays on the stereotyping way too much in an attempt to distract from the real action, and she uses attempts to force drama or humour when it isn't necessary.

I'll also say that I identified who I thought were the red herring and the killer a little more than a hundred pages into the book. And while I was partially wrong, I was hoping to be completely wrong. I mean, who wants to figure out whodunit that soon after the book has been started? How disappointing.