The Dead of Night by Jean Rabe has two stellar things going for it, well developed characters that I will be visiting again and multiple mysteries that Sheriff Blackwell and her small department must solve. This is a community that you can tell the police department feels protective of, even if some of them are considered to be a conspiracy theorist or a few fries short in their Happy Meal.

The Dead of Night picks up right after the first book in the Piper Blackwell Mysteries, The Dead of Winter. Rabe gives us enough background information about what happened in the first book that the reader isn’t lost. Sheriff Blackwell caught a serial killer in the first book while running for sheriff and being a 23 year old just out of the military. I don’t often go back to previous books in a series if I start it on a later book, but I am so intrigued by the premise of the first book and enjoyed the main cast of characters so much that I do want to go back and read The Dead of Winter.

While one of the two main mysteries was pretty easy for me to figure out what was going on early in the book, the second one had me guessing until the end. The way Rabe interweaved the two mysteries and how the cops were going about solving them was very well done. I enjoyed the dynamic between the Sheriff and her Chief Deputy, and am interested to see how the Chief Deputy’s granddaughter fits into upcoming books.

If you are looking for a series with well developed characters and a mystery with lots of suspects, you’ll want to check out the Piper Blackwell Mysteries. ( )