Strong Light of Day: A Caitlin Strong Novel

Land’s exciting seventh Caitlin Strong novel (after 2014’s Strong Darkness) finds the fifth-generation Texas Ranger pursuing two cases: one involving a herd of cattle that has been picked clean to the bone and another revolving around the disappearance of a busload of students from a Houston prep school spending the night at a nature center. Caitlin realizes that the key to solving both may be found in an ingenious Cold War conspiracy involving “agroterrorism” that her own father investigated decades earlier, along with outlaw Boone Masters, the father of her boyfriend, Colt Wesley Masters. A convoluted narrative—with Russian mobsters, irate Texas militiamen, alien invasion theories, cattle rustling, and a corrupt oil baron—slows the momentum early on, but Land pulls out all the stops in the latter chapters. More than a few bombshell revelations and jaw-dropping plot twists will satisfy longtime series fans. Agent: Natalia Aponte, Natalia Aponte Literary Agency. (Oct.)