No Going Back: A Sawyer Brooks Thriller

In Ragan’s uneven third Sawyer Brooks thriller (after 2020’s Out of Her Mind), Sawyer, a scrappy Sacramento, Calif., journalist, investigates a string of murders, which she intuits are being committed by a number of gangs, starting with the female vigilantes known as the Black Wigs. Detective Perez, the case detective, disregards Sawyer’s attempts to assist, believing she wants to discredit him and his unit. The information Sawyer unearths leads back to vicious bullying by a boys club at a Sacramento children’s home and a gang rape at a fraternity party. These discoveries stir up horrendous memories from Sawyer’s childhood, in which her father repeatedly raped her and her two sisters. Sawyer’s resulting trouble with intimacy impedes her relationship with a work colleague she’s dating. The stakes rise as Sawyer’s family is put at risk and she’s almost killed. A gripping plot makes up only in part for unsurprising revelations. This one’s for readers already invested in the series. [em]Agent: Amy Tannenbaum, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (May) [/em]