I usually prefer not knowing the identity of a killer in a book. However, in this case, we do get to know who the guilty is pretty early on. It was quite interesting to follow two storylines, the one in the present time where Lourdes Robles is investigating one murder who turns out to be the latest in a long line of murders. In the other storyline do we follow JT 's rise through the ranks. And, I can't write much more than that without spoiling the story.

So, instead, I will focus on Lourdes Robles, this awesome detective for the NYPD who is the one that through the finding of the body of a young woman starts to unravel a serial killer case. Lourdes is also searching for her younger sister who is missing and each woman found dead makes her sick with worry that it will turn out to be Izzy. Lourdes own father is in prison and she is just the kind of badass female cop I love to read about.

Sunrise Highway is the second book in the Lourdes Robles series and you definitely can read this book without having read the first one. I know this since I haven't read the first book (yet). Now I can't wait to read the first book, and hopefully more books in the series.

I want to thank the publisher for providing me with a free copy through NetGalley for an honest review! ( )

The book takes place in 1977, 2012 and 2018. I found the language in the 1977 part totally offensive. It may have been the way the NYPD officers referenced to Blacks, but I don't like reading it. This book is not for me. Not even going to bother finishing it. ( )

I admit I chose this book because of the title. Having grown up on Long Island, I knew Sunrise Highway well. So it was a bit of a nostalgic trip for me. With that said, this story is revolves around one NYC police detective Lourdes Roble who investigates the murder of a pregnant woman. Her investigation leads her to Long Island and the both the Suffolk and Nassau County police departments. She receives very little support from them. As the investigation continues, it seems that there a serial killer loose and may be killing for over 20 years. Also, it may involve someone on the Long Island police department. As her theory of corruption unfolds, so does the threats to her.

I enjoyed the premise, but this was certainly no mystery and although thrilling, little suspense. I generally liked it but didn’t get into the characters whether they were likable or not. ( )

Good news: Lourdes Robles is back, after her strong debut in PROVING GROUND, and this time we didn't have to wait a decade for a new book by this talented author. A body has washed up on the beach at Far Rockaway at the eastern tip of Queens, so close to Nassau County it's unclear whose jurisdiction it is. The body, though long-decayed, has been preserved in a tough plastic shroud weighed down with rocks. Strangely, small pebbles seem to have filled the victim's mouth and throat, and the skeletal hands cup a collection of small bones: she had been pregnant when she was killed.

But first, there's a chilling prologue. A crotchety old man living near the beach has settled in to wait out a storm. This hurricane they're calling Sandy won't force him out of his home, no sir. His windows are boarded up, his generator is going, and he's fine – until some annoying person starts ringing his doorbell. A girl, a manacle hanging from her wrist, is begging to be let in. Some kind of trick. He keeps his door locked and turns up the sound on his television to drown out her voice and the howling wind.

Stubbornly sticking with the case, Lourdes begins to connect her body with other murders committed over the years, women's bodies dumped near the Sunrise Highway, which runs the length of Long Island near the Atlantic. It crosses through Nassau County into Sussex, where the police chief regards Lourdes' theory about a serial killer with dismissal. They don't have that kind of murder. Except, of course, they do and he knows far more about it than anyone. His first brush with murder was as a teenager, providing key testimony in a murder case in 1977, putting a black man away for raping and suffocating a young woman by jamming sticks and leaves down her throat. The case that started a young district attorney up the career ladder carries along his witness until they are in full control of an entire county. Its police officers who have an enviable clear rate, keep up their stats by torturing designated perpetrators and planting evidence. Lourdes finds herself up against a powerful enemy, all the while fearing her vulnerable little sister Ysabel, missing for weeks, could be one of the killer's victims.

If you've sworn off serial killers, do yourself a favor and make an exception. Blauner's richly evoked characters come to life in a narrative that weaves a web between the past and the present. Just as important as the vivid characters is his use of language, poetic and often surprising. It's a compelling novel, but try not to turn the pages too quickly. His writing is worth savoring.

Reposted from Reviewing the Evidence.

Peter Blauner has not only written other crime novels, but has worked on television shows such as “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” Like that TV series, this book is dark, with violence towards women as well as lots of corruption and unfairness plaguing the “justice” system. From a personal standpoint, I would have enjoyed it more if I could have looked at it as fanciful rather than as echoing so many unfortunate aspects of real life these days.

Lourdes Robles is an NYPD detective with the Queens Homicide Task Force. A body turns up with an unusual cause of death, and before long, Lourdes begins to notice a pattern going back thirty years. But she runs into opposition from the higher-ups in the police. As her old partner Kevin Sullivan pointed out to her, while there were plenty of good cops, “experience had taught him that within every constabulary force was a core of officers who were intolerant of democracy and far more sympathetic to authoritarianism.”

If only a tendency towards despotism were the worst of it…. Before long, the pushback on the investigation by Lourdes turns deadly.

Evaluation: This thriller is well-written, with the narrative going back-and-forth in time to fill in gaps in the story revealed in the chapters set in the present day. It’s the kind of story that if I saw Jim watching it on television, I would ask him to go sequester himself in the basement so I wouldn’t have to risk having nightmares. But Lourdes is a great protagonist (she also appeared in an earlier novel, Proving Ground) and the other characters are convincingly portrayed. The author is a sharp-eyed observer of the worlds both inside and outside the law, and also of that shadowy space in between them. ( )