Murder Book by Lissa Marie Redmond

 

Things are going well professionally for Lauren Riley.  She recently accepted a job in the cold case division of the homicide bureau and she is enjoying the work.  There is not as much time pressure and she doesn't miss being called out in the middle of the night to view a body with all the signs of violence a murder brings.  She has a partner, Shane Reese, who she gets along with.  At home, she has an empty nest as her daughters are grown and gone but she's learning to live with it.

One case that has haunted Lauren is that of a teenage immigrant who was shot and killed on the street a decade or so ago.  The case was investigated closely at the time but no suspect was ever identified.  Lauren and Reese are looking at the case.  When Lauren stays late one night to work on it, she hears someone behind her.  Before she can turn around, she is knifed, then kicked in the head as she falls to the floor.  

When she wakes up in the hospital, she can remember little about her attacker.  But who could it be in the middle of the police station?  The files on the case she and Shane were working or what they call the murder book is missing from her desk.  Why would that case be so important to someone else?  Could her attacker be another policeman?

This is the second book in the Cold Case Investigations series.  Lauren is an interesting woman, a professional who has put romance aside to concentrate on her career.  It is a police procedural focusing on an area that many police units have created, the cold case area where cases from years ago can now be solved using modern police investigative tools and forensics such as DNA analysis that was not available at the time of the crime.  The book also highlights the disgust that other police feel when they find a corrupt officer in their ranks.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.