After 2025’s RIVER OF LIES, Sacramento Detective Emily Hunter becomes the hunted in ILLUSION OF TRUTH.

City Councilman and mayoral wannabe Rob Davis owns Full Charge Electronics, which sells remote-controlled miniature cars and other gizmos. He opposes SPD officers who arrest drug dealers in Sacramento’s faltering north side and works with a church to institute a gun buyback program. A bogus 911 call summons Hunter’s beau, Detective Brian Conner, to the church. An exploding bomb in the donation box causes brain and body trauma to the officers.

"Plot turns reminiscent of the head spin in 1973’s The Exorcist made my brain gyrate with multiple-choice perpetrators, sort of like Abbott and Costello’s 'Who’s on First?' skit."

Davis is the odds-on perp, but he’s crisped by an explosion beneath his toasted Tesla Roadster in front of his pejorative McMansion. He was carrying a dossier containing names of police officers, including Conner and Hunter. Computer and gizmo geek Officer Clay Milton traces circuit board serial numbers to Full Charge, from which he learns that the bomb-carrying cars were created. As more officers are targeted, Hunter is haunted by her mom’s dementia and caring for Conner, whom she’d offended when rejecting his notion of living together.

The targeted officers share a common link; they were part of a special task force when a hostage situation went haywire. The spectrum of potential suspects broadens into warring gang members and police officers who retired after questionable events.

Detective Hunter has developed into a solidified, likable character in James L'Etoile’s superb procedural series. Mayor Carsten summons the “one-woman wrecking crew” into her office, not to demote Emily to meter maid (parking enforcement officer, to be PC) but to hire her to head the mayor’s newly formed Office of Public Safety. Is this the end of the Emily Hunter series?

Hunter and partner in crime-fighting, Javier Medina, build a fast-paced case with rock-solid investigative techniques tempered by witty banter. They round up a quartet of probable suspects, each of whom appears to be the desperado. Plot turns reminiscent of the head spin in 1973’s The Exorcist made my brain gyrate with multiple-choice perpetrators, sort of like Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First?” skit.

Reviewer’s note: The head-spin reference and gruesome link are a metaphor for a shocking, unexpected plot twist.