Colors of Blood: A Moriah Dru/Richard Lake Mystery

At the start of Finger’s convoluted eighth Moriah Dru/Richard Lake mystery (after 2018’s Wolf’s Clothing), 13-year-old Evangeline, a former client of PI Moriah Dru, who specializes in finding missing children, asks Moriah to locate 16-year-old Soire, who’s disappeared from the thoroughbred horse farm near Aiken, S.C., where Soire works as an exercise rider. Evangeline fears for her friend’s life. In the last year, the horse farm has had one other missing rider and several deaths. Moriah can’t say no to Evangeline, and the PI’s subsequent search for Soire leads her to the inner sanctums of the Saratoga, N.Y., racetrack and more than one murderer. Meanwhile, in an unrelated subplot, Moriah’s boyfriend, Richard Lake, tracks a drug smuggler. Readers will need a scorecard to keep track of the many characters given the frequent switches between nicknames and given names. The surprising revelations regarding Soire barely hold together. Finger has done a better job in previous entries. (Oct.)