“Deliciously shocking” (BookLife Review, 2/10/26)

Conrad continues his Callie McFee mystery series with this crisp new entry, following the previous Sins of the Family. This time around, Callie-still grappling with her Texas power broker father’s attempts to conceal his dementia-confides her family secrets to Barney, an unhoused man she visits with on a park bench after her evening runs. But when Barney is murdered, Callie quickly discovers that all is not as it seems: Barney has been chatting with a host of other people, all eager to confess their life’s happenings, and Callie’s sleuthing reveals his real name is Cameron Frost-and he’s a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist. With those revelations, Callie unspools a tangle of threads that lead to murkier truths-some hinting that even her own life may be in danger.

Conrad immediately hooks readers with a well-spun, complex mystery, delivering satisfying twists, subtle clues, and memorable characters. What starts off as the murder of one man quickly escalates into a city-wide, if not national, sensation, and Conrad smoothly builds tension with several intriguing developments: Callie’s discovery that her secrets may have inspired Cameron’s writing; a fellow bench buddy of Cameron’s turning up murdered; and Cameron’s other confidantes scurrying to cover up their whispered disclosures.

That revolving set of characters, coupled with a brisk plot, keeps readers on their toes, resulting in a generous roster of potential suspects to weed through when the time comes. Callie herself is a well-crafted, highly relatable female lead who gives readers a glimpse of several disparate worlds-most significantly, the secretive one of Texas elites and her own maneuvering as a Free Press journalist. Conrad makes readers work for every reveal, and, as the murders and their suspects start piling up, careful attention is required to parse the clues -a choice that makes the book’s climax, when it comes, deliciously shocking.

Takeaway: Crisp murder mystery underpinned by family drama and satisfying twists.

Comparable Titles: Julie Clark’s The Last Flight, Robert Dugoni’s Tracy Crosswhite series.