THE WICKED HOUR is the second installment in Alice Blanchard’s Natalie Lockhart series, and it’s definitely useful (though not imperative) to have read TRACE OF EVIL first.

Natalie is a young police detective in the town of Burning Lake, where she grew up. She and the whole police force are on duty for the town's annual Halloween celebration, which draws about 100,000 tourists and is a huge moneymaker for the local merchants. The fictional town has a well-publicized 17th-century history of hanging witches, as well as a renowned school of music.

"The characters are distinct, the descriptions of the landscape and its history are vivid, and the plot moves along with just the right number of suspects along the way."

Natalie volunteers for the annual cleanup on November 1st, so she is on site when the body of a naked woman is discovered in a dumpster. She is immediately assigned to the case and --- as she did with the Crow Killer in TRACE OF EVIL --- eventually solves the murder with backup from the team at the BLPD. In the process, we learn a lot about the town’s inhabitants and Natalie’s own tragic family history. Regret permeates the book, giving it an air of melancholy and inevitability; more tragedy will ensue for Natalie and her neighbors. Still, there’s a touch of hope --- and romance --- in the late autumn air.

To Blanchard’s credit, the reader is drawn into the world of Burning Lake. The characters are distinct, the descriptions of the landscape and its history are vivid, and the plot moves along with just the right number of suspects along the way. If the denouement doesn’t quite deliver, it’s unfortunate but not a deal-breaker. Fans of Natalie Lockhart undoubtedly will be ready for the third book in the series, which hopefully will come as soon as possible.