Right Behind You

Gardner’s partners in crime fighting and in life—retired FBI profilers Pierce Quincy and Rainie Conner—return in fine fashion, helping the sheriff’s department in Bakersville, Ore., zero in on a suspected rampage killer on the run. Complicating matters, the hunted, caught on camera, is Telly Ray Nash, the older brother of Pierce’s and Rainie’s 13-year-old foster child, Sharlah, whom they hope to adopt. The tricky plot unfolds using storytelling devices that dual readers Daniels and Schnaubelt handle effortlessly. Using a straightforward approach for the passages centering on Quincy’s activities, Daniels provides the profiler with a mature, thoughtful, but worried voice. Schnaubelt easily covers the chapters featuring a hard-boiled Rainie and a determined Sheriff Shelly Atkins, but it’s in the passages narrated in present tense by the confused, fearful, dog-loving teenage Sharlah that her performing skills are put on full display. A Dutton hardcover. (Feb.)