The Art of Deception
Seattle police psychologist Daphne Mathews has her hands full with a  pregnant, addicted, runaway teenager, a murder victim's brother whose strange  behavior unnerves her, and a deputy sheriff she once treated who's now stalking  her. She's frightened enough to move in with Detective John LaMoia, a  development that doesn't exactly thrill Lou Boldt, their boss and Daphne's  ex-lover. But Lou's too busy with his own cases to brood over John and Daphne:  the recent disappearances of two local women, and the death of Billy Chen, the  nephew of Mama Lu, an old friend and a powerful figure in Seattle's Chinese  community, which appeared to be an accident but turns out to have been murder.  The only thing the disappearances and murder have in common is location; all  three victims were last seen in a part of downtown built over the Underground, a  dark and dangerous warren of buildings abandoned after the fire that leveled  Seattle more than a hundred years ago. While Seattle's Underground has been the  setting for several mysteries by other authors (Earl Emerson, J.A. Jance),  Pearson makes the most of its creepy-crawly atmosphere in a gripping thriller  whose solid plotting pulls all of Daphne's, LaMoia's, and Boldt's cases  together. It also wisely reconfigures the personal relationships among the three  central characters, which bodes well for their future adventures in this  long-running series (Middle of  Nowhere,The Pied  Piper).--Jane Adams