What with CSI and Criminal Minds and forensic shows dotting the cable landscape, everyone has turned into an armchair detective. But Hoag's book revisits a time pre-computer and even pre-cell phone, when crimes were solved the old-fashioned way: with good old-fashioned shoe leather on pavement. Hitting the streets.

FBI profiler Vince Leone visits a crime scene awash in a quartet of fifth-grade students. They've happened upon a woman's corpse in a park in the city of Oak Knoll, California, and from this moment on the book has laid out its premise: How do these children deal with what they've experienced?

Hoag is a veteran with 13 straight New York Times bestsellers to her name and twin careers are both a romance and suspense writer. In Deeper Than the Dead, she weaves Vince's investigation around the personal tales of the children. Character development is solid if not mold-breaking, and for anyone with a penchant for dark mystery narrated in a simple style, this one is for you.