The Bitter Season

The Bitter Season
Tami Hoag
Dutton
Penguin Random House
New York, New York
ISBN: 9780451470072
Mass Market Paperback
2017
$ 9.99
480 pages

Supposedly change is good for us, but unfortunately we do not always adjust as well as we could, or should even if it our choice to change.
Detective Nikki Liska has this problem.   She chose to leave homicide due to the long and unpredictable hours which are difficult for a single-parent of two teenaged boys.
This was her choice.
Now she is a part of the newly formed cold case unit in Minneapolis.   Now she has predictable hours, at least that is what she believes entering this position.
Each member of this team is going through the extensive files of cold cases, choosing what case they can successfully solve.  With newness, each member is acutely aware of the need for success in order to continue and be of value to the force and to the taxpayers.
The selected case is the murder of a police officer, Ted Duffy which happened twenty-years ago.   If the police could not solve it in all those years, why would the cold case unit now be able to find new information?  Nikki is not pleased with this decision.
Strangely, Nikki quickly discovers that Ted's widow married his twin brother.   Also the former investigating detective seems to want to be too involved with this new investigation.
Her former partner, Kovac, who is still in homicide is trying to find a new partner.   That is not easy for an experienced detective accustomed to his own procedures. 
His newest case is the brutal murder of a college professor of East Asian history and his wife.   The killer had used a samarai sword and nunjucks.
The professor was due at an interview that morning to become head of his department.  Would anyone kill over a promotion?
The pace of these two alternating storylines creates the perfect  page-turner with characters thoroughly developed with complex relationships complicated with both their personal and professional lives.
California resident, Tammy Hoag, is the best-selling authors of more than thirty books published into over forty million copies of their books translated into more than thirty languages.
The Bitter Season is a fast-paced novel the 480 pages go by.  This book is enthrallingly addictive as you accompany the converging investigations combining past and the present.
Who would best enjoy this mystery?   Any adult reader who delights in a well-plotted and organized story that is a complete distraction from a busy life would be entirely engrossed in this complex real-life novel.