The relentless pursuit of the truth beneath a mountain of falsehoods makes Joanna Schaffhausen's All the Best Lies a compelling read.
In 1975, young mother Camilla Flores struggles to make ends meet as a Las Vegas waitress. She's engaged to a cop and about to testify against a drug dealer, but then is brutally murdered. Her case goes unsolved because the only witness is her infant son, Reed.
Forty years later, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department informs Reed, who's now an FBI agent, that the case is being closed due to the lack of new leads. Reed refuses to let that happen without trying to crack the case himself. He enlists the help of Ellery Hathaway, a cop he rescued from a serial killer when she was a teenager and he was a young officer. The two have since solved cases together, and Ellery is currently suspended from her job for shooting a killer in the previous book in the series (No Mercy).
The pair heads for Vegas but receives a cold reception from local police when they ask to review Camilla's murder file. LVMPD Sheriff Brad Ramsey worked the case years ago and he insists Reed and Ellery are wasting their time; all suspects and leads were thoroughly exhausted. But Ramsey has his own reasons for wanting the case to remain closed. Reed and Ellery are followed, their tires are slashed and some big lies are exposed, but new ones get in the way as they get closer and closer to solving this complicated mystery.
Joanna Schaffhausen's everyman plot and accessible prose rams home an eternal truth: lies left alone will fester and turn everything rotten. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis, freelance reviewer