Book Review: Buried Too Deep by Karen Rose

Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead is a phrase that pulsates through Karen Rose’s newest New Orleans thriller. What does it mean? Could it be that the Broussard P.I. team is going to slam into a case that is long, long dead? Yes indeed. The past never stays buried in Karen Rose’s world, as readers learned with the first New Orleans novel, Quarter to Midnight.

For the folks who work at New Orleans’ Broussard P.I. team (and their ever-widening circle of family and friends), life continues, in the aftermath of Beneath Dark Waters with unexpected aftershocks part of the territory. Karen Rose pulls readers into her plots with a mixture of soul-crushing criminals and the investigatory network that fights them. The phrase, “it takes a village,” underpins the New Orleans series, as exemplified in Beneath Dark Waters, her second NoLa thriller.

Beneath Dark Waters is billed as romantic suspense and it is. But it also examines the notion that family can extend beyond relatives—Val and Kaj and those in their orbit create a self-chosen family over the course of some agonizing weeks. 

Meet Phineas (Phin) Butler Bishop and Cora Winslow, the protagonists of Buried Too Deep. In the last frenzied days of Beneath Dark Waters, Phin, part of the Broussard Team, was traumatized by what took place. His recovery was aided by a new member of his personal team, his service dog SodaPop. He was initially reluctant to bond with SodaPop, “wanting to stand on his own two feet.”

Which had been wrong thinking. He knew that. Knew that there was no shame in needing a service dog. No shame in having PTSD. He’d accepted that. Accepted that he’d have episodes. That he’d sometimes relapse.

 

SodaPop made it easier to stave off his episodes. Helped him recover faster when he did relapse.

 

And you deserve that help. Those words were again in his therapist’s voice.

Phin works as a nighttime security guard for Broussard, a job that’s far below his capacity, because he has awesome military skills. With his service dog by his side, Phin is regaining his ability to fully participate in society. SodaPop makes a great wingman because of his instinctive calming skills.  

When Phin and his friend Burke are at Broussard Headquarters, “a violent break-in occurs.” What gives? And it’s not only NOPD (New Orleans Police Department) who are skeptical about Phin’s involvement. Even Broussard momentarily lashes out at Phin. Phin starts spiraling. 

The whole room was growing faint as the buzzing in Phin’s head grew louder.

 

Shit. Not now. Not again.

 

Phin leaned against the wall. His brain was going numb. He could feel it happening. Sliding to the floor he watched the medics with the out-of-body detachedness that he hated so much.

 

He was disappearing. Again.

So much for his gradual reintegration into his former career, as a member of the Broussard team: in the aftermath of the incident, Phin is laser focused on figuring out why someone shot up Joy, the Broussard office manager, as well as restoring his reputation. While he’s doing that, Joy fights for her life in the hospital. There’s another element to Buried Too Deep—there was a mystery woman in the office when everything went pear-shaped. Meet Cora Winslow, a librarian and a woman in need of answers.

The body of her father, murdered twenty-three years ago, has just been discovered under a recently demolished building. So who has been sending her handwritten letters—written and signed by her father—every year since she was five? Someone wants to keep Cora in the dark. And now, they’re coming for her. 

She had hoped the Broussard investigatory team could find out what really happened to her father. Cora runs away after the shooting—but not before calling the cops, an action that saves Joy’s life. Cora Winslow is one of the most intelligent heroines I can recall—she’s surface smart, deep smart, amazing recall smart. After her messed up life is sorted out, someone needs to get this woman on Jeopardy! 

The Broussard team steps up to protect Cora 24/7, but Phin takes it personally, refusing to leave her side. Cora’s house and her ancestors are part of the story too. It’s a complicated plot, a bit like peeling an onion or Russian dolls.

There’s a new corrupt preacher in town so make space in the pulpit, Jerry Falwell. Move over Elmer Gantry (Gantry being fictional, “a charismatic and morally ambiguous preacher who uses religion for personal gain).” Meet Reverend Alan Beauchamp, the mesmerizing minister of not only a brick-and-mortar New Orleans church, but also a virtual minister to more than “fifteen thousand members all over the United States and abroad, many of whom gave faithfully every week.” His faithful followers have no idea that Beauchamp is a steely-nerved murderer, happier to have others do his dirty work but willing to do what’s necessary on his own. Karen Rose has a dab hand with villains, but the glib-talking Reverend Alan sinks to a new low: his grandson Sage is a chip off the old block. And, more crucially, Sage is the guy who shot up the Broussard HQ. Why? Because his grandfather was intimately involved in the death of Cora Winslow’s father. Enough spoilers—get your hands on Buried Too Deep—it’s a guaranteed thriller, populated with folks that readers have come to love. It’s another winner from Karen Rose.