I first “met” Seattle Homicide Detective Tracy Crosswhite in Robert Dugoni’s My Sister’s Grave and loved her, so I then eagerly read Her Final Breath. Following along in short order (he definitely can crank out books at a fast clip) were In the Clearing, The Trapped Girl, and Close to Home (all of which I reviewed on littorallibrarian.org).  I enjoyed them all, particularly the way Dugoni makes his characters REAL, somehow writing a female perspective incredibly well. So I was pleased to receive a copy of #6 in the Tracy Crosswhite series, A Steep Price, from Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

This one starts out with the murder of a woman who has been organizing her community to fight against the increasing activity by gangs and drug dealers. She was shot in broad daylight, yet somehow there are no witnesses when Tracy’s fellow Homicide Detective Vic Fazzio and Del Castigliano begin investigating the murder. In the meantime, Tracy is stuck in court, where she is asked by a friend who works Missing Persons for help. This is close to Tracy’s heart as it was her own sister’s disappearance that led her to leave her career in teaching to become a cop. This time, a young Indian female named Vita Mukherjee, who is just about ready to go to medical school, vanishes. Aditi, her closest friend since childhood, with whom she has plans to partner in a pediatric practice following med school, reports her “sister” Vita missing the day after Aditi returns from three months in India. Tracy agrees to help, despite having to do it on the DL to avoid further complications with Nolasco, the boss who seems to pop up as somewhat of a nemesis throughout the series.

So there are two stories at once: the missing Indian woman and the murdered community activist. Although I generally don’t unravel plotlines before the big reveal, I had a good idea what was going on with one of these (for a change).

There are a few things that Dugoni totally nails in A Steep Price: the challenges of dual career couples, the search for life-work balance by working mothers, the personal hell of a serious medical diagnosis, cultural struggles within immigrant families with deeply help cultural traditions, and “sugar dating” (yes, it’s a thing). The character development is awesome, as I’ve come to expect from Dugoni. This one is less reliant on setting than some others, but it isn’t a negative at all. The plotlines move along, and everything comes together at the end. This is another winner in this series (and, once again, it can easily be read as a standalone mystery as well as part of a series).

I’m not sure if Dugoni’s future books will include the strong emphasis on social and political relevance seen in  A Steep Price, but I liked it a lot. Highly recommended both for established fans of the Tracy Crosswhite series, as well as newcomers. Four stars.