The first of my Christmas presents didn't let me down.  I'm here to tell you that Elouise Norton, LAPD detective, is a breath of fresh air in police procedural/crime fiction.

Lou is smart, funny, sexy, intense as well as being a perfectly flawed individual.  Yes, sometimes her personal experiences and biases colour how she views a case and how she interacts with her co-workers, but she's so very real!  She has none of those endearing quirky flaws that many crime fiction leads have either.

Lou's current case begins with a house fire and three dead bodies and of course, there's far more than meets the eye.  As Lou and her partner, Colin, pursue the case, she also has to deal with her once-estranged but now back home husband, Greg.  And the remnants of the death by murder of her older sister years before (we saw the solving of that case play out in the previous book).

The twisty trail of the case kept me hooked through the book and while I had suspicions that changed as I went along, the culmination of everything was still pretty much of a surprise.  Not so surprising was the plot of Lou's marriage trials and tribulations, however there were a few bits that I wasn't expecting.  I do hope that in the next book we see more of Lou's friends, Lena and Sayeeta.  They're great characters and I love their interactions with Lou.  Girl power!  :)

I only have one complaint and I don't even know that it's valid, me being a white woman and all, but there MUST be some other way to describe POC skin than to liken it to some coffee or chocolate drink. (And in a book/series with a majority of POC characters, there is a lot of skin described!)

So my second foray into Lou Norton's world was a resounding success.  I loved it and have added Book 3 to my wishlist.