Buried Too Deep (New Orleans, #3; Romantic Suspense, #30) by Karen Rose 
Published by Berkley on August 13, 2024
Genres: Crime Drama, Suspense
Pages: 517
Format: Hardcover
Source: Publisher
I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
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From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Karen Rose comes another explosive novel in the New Orleans series, where some secrets are worth dying for—or killing to keep.
Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.
Employed as the nighttime security guard of Broussard Private Investigations, Phineas Bishop has been working through overwhelming PTSD episodes from his Army service while still utilizing his military skills. But when a violent break-in occurs at the office, the accusatory eyes of the NOPD glance to Phin, and he resolves to track down the intruder and clear his name.
Phin’s only lead and witness is Cora Winslow, a spirited librarian who also needs answers. Her father’s body has been discovered under a recently demolished building, murdered twenty-three years ago. So, who has been sending her the handwritten letters—written and signed by him—every year since she was five? Someone wants to keep Cora in the dark. And now, they’re coming for her.
As Cora’s bodyguard, Phin is surprised by his fondness for the woman’s fierce determination and research prowess. But New Orleans’s Garden District holds secrets as old as the streets themselves. With help from the entire Broussard P.I. team, Phin and Cora enter a labyrinth of fraud and homicide that threatens to bury them all.
For a story where you know who the killer is from the start, I couldn’t wait to find out the most important part which was why.
Librarian Cora Winslow leads a quiet life in the Garden District of New Orleans, and would never believe herself to ever racing down the sidewalk trying to get away from a killer. Cora has a mystery that needs to be solved. Cora has been getting random letters from her father over the last twenty or so years, but she has never been able to locate him. That is probably because the police just told her they found his body and that he has been dead these past 20 years. So she thought a simple stop at Broussard Private Investigations to see her mother’s old friend Joy might lead to an answer of who has been sending these letters and why? When a man follows her in and shoots Joy, the quiet librarian finds herself on the run from a killer.
Broussard and his people want to know who tried to kill Joy so they take on Cora’s case to find out what happened to her father and locate the person who has been sending her the letters, and is that person the same one who killed him?
Phineas Bishop has just returned from leave. Phin is former military with severe PTSD. His long-time friend and his wife have trained an emotional support dog to help Phin deal with any panic attacks before they get out of hand and it has been working. Phin wants to help protect Cora and with the help of SodaPop, Phin hopes that he can keep his demons at bay and keep Cora safe.
THOUGHTS:
At first I thought it was odd that we know from the beginning who the killer is, we also know that he too wants to know who has been pretending to be Cora’s father. It is the same person who hid his body and did that person see the killer that night 23 years ago? So the killer is just as interested as Cora in what Broussard’s people find out. Even though we know who the killer is, we don’t know why they killed Cora’s dad all those years ago so that it what kept me reading.
This story has really good pacing. Once again, we have several POV coming together to tell the story but it flowed nicely.
This is also noted as Book 3 of the New Orleans series and #30 of Karen Rose’s Romantic Suspense but I didn’t feel left out not knowing all the secondary characters who were obviously the focus of previous stories. This left me feeling like I could probably grab any Karen Rose novel in any order and enjoy it as a standalone.
