This was my favorite book of the week.

Full Disclosure by Dee Henderson

Ann Silver is a cop’s cop. As the Midwest Homicide Investigator, she is called in to help local law enforcement on the worst of cases, looking for answers to murder. Hers is one of the region’s most trusted investigative positions.

Paul Falcon is the FBI’s top murder cop in the Midwest. If the victim carried a federal badge or had a security clearance, odds are good Paul and his team see the case file or work the murder.

Their lives intersect when Ann arrives to pass a case off her desk and onto his. A car wreck and a suspicious death offer a lead on a hired shooter he is tracking. Paul isn’t expecting to meet someone, the kind that goes on the personal side of the ledger, but Ann Silver has his attention.

The better he gets to know her, the more Paul realizes her job barely scratches the surface of who she is. She knows spies and soldiers and U.S. Marshals, and has written books about them. She is friends with the former Vice President. People with good reason to be cautious about who they let into their lives deeply trust her. Paul wonders just what secrets Ann is keeping, until she shows him the John Doe Killer case file, and he starts to realize just who this lady he is falling in love with really is…

*****

There were so many things to like about this book.

The characters were complex, interesting, and the principles very well developed. In the end many more were introduced, all of them needed to make the story work.

The events and situations were unique as well. In all of the books I’ve read I’ve not run across another story treatment even remotely like this one.

On the downside, there were a few segments that didn’t make sense. This book was published in 2012. I think with all of the recent digital changes we’ve experienced, if it had been more recently published some of the questionable areas would have played out differently. Tracking devices could have replaced stake-outs, that sort of thing. It would have made it more believable. Those bits were only annoyances, though, they weren’t deal breakers.

There were many twists and turns in the action. Just when you thought you knew where it was all going everything changed and suddenly you had no idea.

It was delightful that they were people of substance, full of surprises. They did things that made you stop and think a bit. I like books like this.

It did not end the way I thought, and it took all 480 pages to get to a conclusion I’d never have guessed.

The surprising part in the end was the sympathy I felt for the illusive killer.

I would read this book again, for sure.