The Real Enemy by Kathy Herman ~ Book Review

Brill Jessup is the new Police Chief in the town of  Sophie Trace, Tennesse.  Not only is she the new chief she is the first female chief the town has had, so she feels she has a lot to prove.  Her family made the move from Memphis where she was on the police force for 18 years.  She had an excellent career there and was known for finding clues others missed.  But the family moved when her personal life took a bad turn in an attempt to be where Brill would be less busy solving major crimes and would have more time to devote to their daughter.  She and her husband, Kurt,  are trying to make a decent home life for their 12 year daughter still at home .  Trouble is Brill can barely tolerate being in the same room as her husband.  Kurt, her husband, is trying everything in his power to make things right with Brill after his huge failure, but no matter how kind and loving he tries to be it just makes Brill more bitter and angry.  In trying to hold it together for their daughter, they are butting their heads against stone walls with each other.  And their daughter is noticing the tenseness of her mother towards her father.  Now Brill has to deal with a rash of town people who seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth .  The locals seem to want to blame an old Cherokee legend that has the spirits of former Cherokee who were driven off the land coming to get their revenge.  But Brill knows there has to be a logical explanation.  But with seemingly no clues left behind it's an race against time to find the missing people.  And now she has a gang trying to raise it's head in the local school.  As Brill works around the clock, she must confront the real enemy behind what is going on both in the case and at home.

I loved this story.  Kathy Herman is one of my favorite Christian suspense mystery writers.  She is able to write a great page turning mystery while also placing in tough moral dilemmas for the characters to wrestle with.  The story was interesting, fast paced and Brill's feelings were very raw and relatable.  It drew lots of emotions and made me think.  I had read books two & three  in this trilogy years ago and really liked them.  They were sent to me for review so I was always wanting to get to the first book to find out how the story all started.  It's been on my library list for years.  So this year I was determined to get to it to knock it off for my reading challenge and it didn't disappoint. 

Rated this one a 10/10