I’m usually the type who needs to start any kind of series from the beginning. Heck, I’m the kind of person who dislikes walking into a movie five minutes after it starts. So, although I wouldn’t normally pick up a mystery series for the first time and dive right into book #10, I’ve heard enough glowing things about Sara Blaedel’s Detective Louise Rick series that I decided to give this latest installment a try.

A HARMLESS LIE starts with a gut-punch of a scene set in 1995. A girl, having just survived a serious blow to the head, retreats into a cave to find shelter. From there, the narrative cuts away to the present day, and to a beach in Phuket, Thailand, where Louise Rick is spending some time resting and recuperating prior to a new assignment as a homicide detective (she previously had been involved in missing persons).

"[Blaedel is] adept at both constructing a propulsive plot and giving her characters rich and complex inner lives. This might have been my first foray into her books, but it certainly won’t be my last."

Unbeknownst to everyone other than the people involved, Louise is also nursing a broken heart. Her partner has expressed a desire to focus on building his relationship with his newly discovered birth daughter rather than resuming his romance with Louise. The two of them, along with Louise’s foster son, have continued on to the next leg in their planned around-the-world trip, while Louise has elected to stay behind in Thailand.

But her self-reflection and self-pity are abruptly interrupted when she receives an urgent message from home. Her beloved brother, Mikkel, has attempted suicide. Louise rushes back to Denmark, relieved that Mikkel has survived and disappointed to learn that his wife, Trine, has abruptly left him. This isn’t the first time she has abandoned him and their children, but this time was a complete surprise. They were getting along, and Trine took hardly any personal possessions when she disappeared.

Coincidentally (or perhaps not), the body of a long-missing teenager (remember that opening scene?) has just been found in a cave. It turns out that Trine was the girl’s classmate, and one of the last people to see her alive before she disappeared on a class trip back in 1995. Now it’s looking more and more like Trine perhaps didn’t leave her family of her own accord. The police suspect that Mikkel might have been involved in her disappearance, but Louise is determined to clear his name. Meanwhile, Louise’s friend, reporter Camilla Lind, starts tracking down other classmates from that ill-fated trip --- and discovers some disturbing new details.

It certainly can be a bit disorienting to pick up a book that’s part of a well-established series. What struck me upon first reading is the extent of the tragedies that have marked Louise’s life and the lives of several of those around her. But Blaedel does an admirable job of alluding to past events that remain relevant to the current plot without getting bogged down in too-extensive exposition. The narrative moves back and forth between the events leading up to the girl’s 1995 disappearance, and Louise and Camilla’s present-day investigations into those events.

It’s clear why Sara Blaedel has been named Denmark’s most popular novelist several years running. She’s adept at both constructing a propulsive plot and giving her characters rich and complex inner lives. This might have been my first foray into her books, but it certainly won’t be my last.