Daylight, David Baldacci, author; Brittany Pressley, Kyf Brewer, narrators
This is a relatively new series about a female detective searching for information about her twin sister, Mercy Pine, who disappeared when they were 6 years old. This is the third book in the series. Now Atlee Pine is in her thirties. She is an FBI agent, and she is trying to clear her head so she can work without being compromised by her need to find her missing sister and mother. Her mother was a mole planted inside the Mafia. After she was exposed, the family was placed into witness protection, but when their location was discovered, it seemed safer to move them to another place where they could hide more successfully. They sent an agent to protect and watch over the family.
In this novel, Atlee winds up working with John Puller, of the CID (who has his own series), when she messes up a collar he was about to make on the man she was seeking in order to question him about her sister’s disappearance. She suspects that the man, Tony Vincenzo, is related to the man who abducted her sister and seriously injured her in the process. That man is Eto Vincenzo who disappeared.
After she bungles his arrest, she decides to make it up to Puller and begins to aid him in his investigation. It seems like a natural outgrowth of the circumstances since both have the same family under surveillance. Her assistant, Carol Blum is actively working both cases with her. When it becomes apparent that high-powered people are manipulating the investigation, the story travels off into many directions which I did not feel were knitted that well together. However, Atlee does discover many pertinent facts about her sister which may help her find her missing twin. In the process, she helps to break up a criminal blackmail scheme involved in drugs and sex.
To quickly summarize: Atlee is searching for her sister. In that search, she soon works with Agent Puller. When his associate, a CID agent is murdered, she and Puller pursue the gunman. An unknown “policeman” shoots the suspect. As the investigation proceeds and clues are uncovered, it leads to a far broader criminal plot than was originally thought. Everyone involved is in grave danger because high powered people seem to be involved and are pulling strings to prevent the investigation from going forward. Puller and Atlee never give up!
Everyone Atlee seems to contact eventually winds up dead or gravely injured or in danger of being gravely injured. She seems to be the cat with nine lives, the brightest bulb in the box. Atlee seemed to jump to several conclusions, but often, I was never sure how she arrived there. She spends a lot of time agonizing, crying a lot and bending over to vomit whenever she feels overwhelmed. It was too emotional rather than cerebral, and it seemed to be written for women rather than the normal general audience Baldacci novels usually attract. I was disappointed. The book had too many tangents and too many characters popping up and then dropping with little or no impact on the conclusion of the novel. The saving grace was that the author somehow kept me engaged, but the book seemed to be more chick lit than mystery.
The narrators are really good, capturing the personalities of the characters uniquely and adding just the right amount of emotion and tension to the reading. Often, though, the author has made it too much of an emotional female dialogue, which I do not believe appeals to a broad enough audience.