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Tracefinder: Changes (Book 2)
Kaje Harper
Published 2016
Cover design, Sidney Lowell of Creative Minds
Five stars

I really didn’t want to give this five stars. It seems too much. Of course, as the second in a series, it didn’t have the novelty that book one (Contact) had, and with all the main characters established, what was going to pull me into Brian and Nick’s world that would make it as compelling as the first book was?

Truth is, the key points that made the first book in this series so compelling � the complex personalities of Brian and Nick, and the painful moral ambiguity in which they find themselves � are still central to the plot and the emotional structure of this book. And they’re not simply reiterated, they’re developed. It’s not as if the good guys and the bad guys are every really confused with each other, it’s that Brian and Nick are very clearly on the side of the angels, although their purity, by police standards anyway, is seriously compromised by both their own choices and the actions of the police themselves. Indeed, the messy plot of this book brings to mind the bedeviled Donovan family in the cable TV series “Ray Donovan.�

Nick Rugo is still caught between his duty to the Minneapolis Police Department and his increasingly undeniable love for Brian. Brian Kerr is caught between his love for Nick, and his love for his siblings, Lori and Damon, who have spent their lives—and compromised their lives—to protect him. Even Damon, who is clearly a bad guy, has done terrible things only in order to protect his younger sister and brother. Damon is almost a tragic figure here, because doing bad things for good reasons still makes you bad, without diminishing the love that is the reason behind those desperate actions.

Brian is a remarkable figure. Hiding behind a false personality, “Bry,� that allows people to believe him to be disabled or stupid, his inability to be calculating or selfish is both his greatest appeal and his most dangerous weakness.

All of this comes home with spectacular violence when Nick’s good-faith efforts to work with the police lead to disaster, and Damon feels he can stay hidden no longer. The bottom line is that Brian’s gift, his ability to Find missing people with psychic precision, continues to be a valuable commodity that, once understood, corrupts good intentions and fans the flames of evil ones.

Harper ends this book, as she did the first one, in a satisfying way that leaves loose threads untied and the door wide open into the next volume. She also leaves her readers anxious to know what will happen, without feeling at all cheated. Bravo. I’ll be here when book 3 appears.