Dangerous Passage

July 22, 2013
Harris, whose Blood Covenant won Romantic Times’ Best Inspirational Suspense Honor in 2011, opens her new Southern Crimes series with a novel that exposes the darkness of human trafficking. Det. Avery North discovers a serial killer at work in Atlanta when she’s called to the scene of a murder—a young Asian woman with a magnolia tattoo on her right shoulder, the second victim with that tattoo. As she follows the clues, Avery must also figure out her heart when it comes to dashing assistant medical examiner Jackson Bryant. Between Jackson; Avery’s tween daughter; her needy family; her own heart, slowly healing after her husband’s death three years earlier; and now a challenging murder case, this tough detective has her hands full. When another Asian woman goes missing, Avery and Jackson must discover the killer before he strikes again. But will love strike again for this wounded pair? Readers looking for a strong female protagonist and a unique murder mystery will find much to admire in Harris’s work. Agent: Joyce Hart, Hartline Literary Agency.

September 15, 2013
The first book in Harris' Southern Crimes series introduces Avery North, widowed mother and Atlanta police detective, who comes from a family steeped in police work. Her father and late brother were both officers. As the story begins, she is called in on a case on her day off when a Jane Doe is found with a magnolia tattoo that matches the one found on an earlier victim. Both victims were young Asian women in their teens. It looks like the work of a serial killer. At the scene she sees that the medical examiner assigned to the case is Jackson Bryant, who she has dated a few times and who escorted her to her father's retirement party. Good police work and forensic detecting lead them to the identity of the second victim and from there into a labyrinth of international criminal activity. The combination of police procedural and a Christian love story is nicely plotted, and the characters are interesting, boding well for the future of the series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)