How do authors handle a police procedural written nowadays? Marcy McCreary’s debut, The Disappearance of Trudy Solomon, introduces a fifty-three-year-old police detective who questions her own actions after a shooting. In fact, Detective Susan Ford questions the past and the present while investigating a cold case and examining possibilities in the recent one.

Detective Susan Ford is on desk duty until she’s cleared by Internal Affairs, and others. But, she wonders if she’ll ever be cleared by the members of the Black community, although she had been an ally of the Black Lives Matter movement. Then, she shot and killed a young man who wasn’t holding the gun that shot her. Calvin Barnes’ family wants answers.

It’s the perfect time to look into a case that haunted her teen years and much of her father’s career as a police detective. Forty years earlier, Trudy Solomon, a waitress, went missing. The Roths, owners of Cuttmans, a resort in the Catskills, were the powerful family in the community at the time. Trudy’s father always felt as if the family knew more about the disappearance than they thought. Now, the case is of interest again because skeletal remains were found in New York State, and there were identity questions. But, then Detective Ray Gorman, a detective, connects a few dots and finds Trudy Solomon living in a retirement home. She has Alzheimers.

Where has Trudy been all these years? Was there a crime committed forty years earlier? Because she’s on desk duty, Susan’s boss allows her to work with her father to dig into the past. Much of the book centers on the careful re-examination of past actions. I liked the team made up of Susan Ford and her father. At the same time, she’s frustrated that no one believes her when she says Calvin Barnes had a gun. To the townspeople, she appears to be another cop who shot a Black man.

While most of the story is about the search for Trudy Solomon’s past, Susan’s guilty feelings and investigation into her handling of the crime scene is a timely topic. How will authors handle police procedurals? They’ll allow the cops to analyze their own actions, to see the results in the communities they serve. Even mature police officers may question their actions now. Marcy McCreary juggles the cold case and the current investigation skillfully in her debut, The Disappearance of Trudy Solomon.

Marcy McCreary’s website is https://www.marcymccreary.com/

The Disappearance of Trudy Solomon by Marcy McCreary. CamCat Books, 2021. ISBN 9780744303308 (hardcover), 368p.

FTC Full Disclosure – I received a .PDF to review in order to moderate a panel.