A Steep Price is book 6 in Robert Dugoni’s Tracy Crosswhite series. Tracy is a detective in the Seattle Police Department and readers of the series will be familiar with her workplace, her colleagues and her geographical surroundings. This time she is pregnant and endeavouring, unsuccessfully, to conceal her pregnancy. Two young Indian girls, Aditi and Kavita, the best of friends, strive to save enough money to put themselves through medical school. Both their lives take a sharp turn when Aditi succumbs to her parents’ wishes and enters into an arranged marriage, while Kavita suddenly goes missing. Tracy is called in to investigate her disappearance but despite her efforts, the missing persons case becomes a murder enquiry. While Tracy is endeavouring to solve the mystery of Kavita’s death, her colleagues, Del and Faz are investigating the murder of a young mother gunned down in front of her housing estate. The focus of their investigation is a local drug lord known as “Little Jimmy” who holds them responsible for the death in custody of his father. Faz is going through a rough patch at home as well, as his wife battles a distressing diagnosis. While the two murders are unrelated, the tension builds as both investigations reach their climax, with one of the detectives coming close to becoming a victim himself. And when Tracy discovers who killed Kavita, there will be shock waves reverberating through the community.
Robert Dugoni always writes with authenticity, not only painting an accurate picture of Seattle and its surrounding area, but accurately describing how the Seattle Police Department might conduct a murder investigation. In A Steep Price, his background to the story of the missing girls broaches on the touchy subject of arranged marriages and, specifically, how it affects families who have imported their culture into America. All the characters, the new and the old, are fully developed and the dialogue, including that of the Indian characters, is believable. As for Tracy and her colleagues, Dugoni brings them to life by delving into their personal circumstances. It is unusual to have two entirely different, unrelated stories woven into one but it seems to work; and why not? – it would not be surprising to find the police department of a major city working on more than one homicide at once. In another interesting strand to the story, the author delves into websites promoting “sugar daddies” where young women looking to earn money, in this case to fund their way through medical school, can offer themselves as escorts to older, wealthy men. In A Steep Price, Dugoni has skilfully avoided the trap of getting too bogged down in the day to day drudgery of a police investigation and has managed to produce, by ongoing intrigue, the back stories of key characters and by covering two investigations simultaneously, a real page-turner.
Darryl Greer, Writer 