The first of the Park Trilogy, Olive Park introduces the Ongoing Investigation Division - an effort to devote manpower to cold cases and reallocate resources to work the cases to their natural conclusion. The department is made up of Detectives Stan Wyld and Jake Steiner and I.T. specialist, Mallory Dimante. Their first case is one that has stumped the police department for fifteen years - the Olive Park murders - three young children found buried in shallow graves with no discernable pattern, little evidence and no viable suspects.

This was fantastic. It started slow but steadily built up speed until the explosive conclusion. It wasn't perfect - some bits felt rush and unexplained (I still don't know why that cop was at the trailer there to start with) and the timeline was a bit hard to gauge but generally it was a really enjoyable read with interesting and mostly likeable characters and a complex case.

Stan was great. Jake was average. And Mallory started off fantastic and steadily devolved into a complete ass. Like I mean yeah, I get why she did it (forge Stan and Jake's name to an email requesting they investigate the Olive Park murders as their first case), but she could've apologised for screwing them over. Regardless of whether or not she'd do it again. Up until then she was a bit naive and a lot gung ho but likeable. I didn't like her as much after. I understood - but I didn't like it. She was really unfair saying they weren't going to investigate anything - just because they decided to make a difference tackling other cases first. Cases they'd be more likely to close.

In addition to the police, the narrative follows M and his little sister, Jessie who have recently moved in with their aunt after their parent's deaths. I adored M. He was smart and protective and brave and a total badass. The ending where he takes the perp down with the shovel was epic. The alternating viewpoints between the OID and M could have been a disaster but it worked well to drive the plot onwards and reveal otherwise unknown information. And I came to be heavily invested in M's story - even more so than that of the OID.

I did not remotely see the ending coming. The twist was awesome and I loved it. It's so rare to be surprised by crime fiction these days - you tend to read one and have read most, so it was fantastic to be genuinely taken aback. I can't wait to read the rest of the trilogy. I can't quite justify 5 stars, but it was a bit better than 4 and not quite 4.5 - so splitting the difference - 4.25 stars. ( )

Wow, a well paced story, great characters and high tension ending. I was drawn in from the first chapter and given a whole bunch of mysteries to figure out.
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