A young black girl disappears from Cincinnati’s West End. No witnesses, no leads. Two days later, a white girl the same age is snatched from Hyde Park Square. Cincinnati’s mayor receives a letter brutally stating: “Find the black girl and we’ll return the white girl.”

The fuse lit, two female detectives race to uncover the kidnappers. Hope dwindles as time accumulates, and passes, without resolution. Cincinnati PD and the FBI form an uneasy alliance while battling the city’s racial stereotypes and stigmas.

In the latest thriller from Rock Neelly, author of the Purple Heart Detective Agency and the Prince of the Border, readers ride shotgun through the Queen City in police patrol cars, searching recently vacated safe rooms, questioning sorrowful family members, grilling drug lords, looking for anonymous white vans and dark motives. Each detective is tough on her own, combining to make a ferocious duo, but will that be enough…and in time.

Weaving together race, law enforcement, family ties, buried history, and life along the banks of the Ohio River, readers will face their own assumptions as they see suspicions reflected on the page. Written with complicated realistic characters, River of Tears makes us think about missing girls used as pawns – and what we would do if we had to find them?