Thin Dark Line

Coming off her best-selling hit, Guilty As Sin (LJ 2/1/96), Hoag sets her latest in Bayou Breaux, a fictional Cajun town. A woman is brutally murdered, and everyone, from cops to citizenry, is convinced that the deed was done by Marcus Renard, a fellow she charged with stalking shortly before her death. Renard is set free on a technicality only to be beaten insensible by the chief detective on the case, Nick Fourcade, a patois-speaking recluse with a dark past. Fourcade is arrested by Annie Broussard, an idealistic young sheriff's deputy and the only woman on the force. Because she stands up for what she believes is right, Annie is hounded from her job by the good-ol'-boy cop network. She then joins forces with Fourcade to solve the murder and a series of rapes. Hoag almost scuttles her own story by making the first 200 pages dull and repetitive before finally settling down to let the characters evolve and the story take its own dark, satisfying turns. This doesn't work completely, but her fans won't mind. For popular collections.