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Moriah Dru / Richard Lake Books In Order
Publication Order of Moriah Dru / Richard Lake Books
The End Game (2010) Hardcover Paperback Kindle
The Last Temptation (2012) Hardcover Paperback Kindle
The Devil Laughed (2013) Hardcover Paperback Kindle
Murmurs of Insanity (2014) Hardcover Paperback Kindle
Running With Wild Blood (2015) Hardcover Paperback Kindle
American Nights (2016) Hardcover Paperback Kindle
Wolf's Clothing (2018) Hardcover Paperback Kindle
The Moriah Dru/Richard Lake series is a series of six novels by author Gerrie Ferris Finger a retired American journalist. The mystery novel series features Moriah Dru a former police detective who now runs Child Trace Inc, a lost child finding service. Set in Atlanta, the series sees Dru work lost children cases in conjunction with police lieutenant Richard Lake. Known simply as Dru to her friends, Moriah Dru is very effective at ferreting out information from seemingly normal looking people and situations. When we first meet the two characters, they are in a romantic relationship, which continues throughout the entire series. Called upon to solve a range of child disappearances in Atlanta, Georgia, the two partners work very well together meticulously piecing together tiny leads to find missing children. Both Dru and Lake are quite the lovable detective type characters, which seek out the truth regardless of the consequences. What makes the Moriah Dru/Richard Lake team so effective in their work is that they seem to set up their investigations without seeming to do so. By doing so, they catch their suspects by surprise almost every time.
The first novel in the Moriah Dru/Richard Lake series, The End Game is the most popular novel in the series. Published in 2010 by Minotaur books, the book went on to achieve commercial success and massive popularity in the United States, Europe, and all over the world. Gerrie Ferris Finger published five more novels in the series that brought to fans the very same intriguing story lines, narrative drive, and thrill of the first. Her first novel and arguably her most popular, The End Game, won the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition by St Martin's Press, who became the book's publishers. What sets this mystery series apart from the traditional mystery is that it does not shy away from portraying the darker aspect of society such as the kidnap of children.
The Moriah Dru/Richard Lake series makes for good reading for anyone that fancies the nontraditional detective mystery novel. An articulate narrator, Ferrie provides some punchy dialogue interspersed with some sly humor in fast paced and gripping narratives. The typical detective partners are usually persons that have complementary strengths and seem to have a clash of personality. Ferrie turns this on its head by making Lake and Dru characters whose personalities clash on very few occasions. The novels adopt a brisk pace that sees Lake and her boyfriend investigate trafficking rings, infiltrate biker gangs, and travel to places as far as Costa Rica and Rio, to find missing children. The author introduces many interesting characters alongside the main ones, which adds a bit of spice to the storylines. Nonetheless, given the short time frame of the novels, tracking the connections between the main characters can become quite difficult.
The End Game
In the first book of the Moriah Dru/Richard Lake series, Dru is called to the scene of a fire that has burnt down a family home. The owners of the house, Ed and Wanda Barnes had two adopted children Dorthea and Jessica Rose. After digging through the rubble and ashes, the police can find no sign of any of the children's bodies. Dru and her boyfriend lieutenant Richard Lake are hired by the Juvenile court to track down the missing children. Soon after, the two detectives find clues that suggest that the children may not only be missing, but may have been victims of a kidnapping ring. This leads to the inevitable conclusion that the fire may not have been an accident after all, but arson. What the detectives do not know is whether the fire was set to kill the parents or to cover the kidnapping. Concluding that it is highly unlikely that the two crimes were a coincidence, the big question is whether they are looking for a group of abductors or just one evil perpetrator. With the clock ticking, they know that they have to find answers to the puzzle as fast as possible, if they are to find the children and bring them home safe.
After they question the neighbors, they are firmly convinced that the abduction of the girls is more than the typical kidnap for ransom. Further digging reveals that it is not the first time that foster children from the locale have disappeared. Two other children have gone missing without a trace over the last eight years. Their persistence soon unearths a snitch who tells them of a secret organization, whose members use chess piece code names. The organization allegedly traffics children to Costa Rica. For Lake and Dru, it is now a race against time to find the kidnappers and the children before they leave the US.
The second book in the Moriah Dru/Richard Lake series sees Du and Lake called upon to help find Kinley Eileen Cameron a recovering addict and her daughter Kinley Whitley, that have gone missing from their Palm Springs home. The child's father who is fighting with Eileen over the custody of the child lives in Atlanta. He is convinced that the mother is hiding Kinley among the Indians in the desert. Moriah Dru and Richard Lake are hired by the Juvenile court to find the child and bring it home.
An expert at reading seemingly normal criminal suspects, Dru is wary of the intellectual looking Bradley. He has Ivy League academic credentials, is rich, but also a member of certain secretive societies. While Lake digs for any links between the kidnapping and the Atlanta Suburban Girl Murders, Dru investigates Bradley's history. During the investigation she meets several possible suspects such as Phillippe a self-proclaimed Cordon Bleu chef; Heidi, Arlo's widowed neighbor' Dartagan Leroi a police officer among others. With so many possible suspects, the case continues to get even more complex.
As she gets closer to solving the mystery, she meets Tess who convinces her to attend a bizarre Maiden ceremony. What she does not know is that her very life is in danger by agreeing to attend the ceremony without backup. A little girl in a wig piques her interest, only for her to pass out and wake up in the desert in the middle of a raging monsoon. Will this be the last of Moriah Dru.
Book Series In Order » Characters » Moriah Dru / Richard Lake
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