Buried Too Deep by Karen Rose

Buried Too Deep
by Karen Rose

ISBN-13: 9780593638583
Hardcover: 528 pages
Publisher: Berkley
Released: August 13, 2024

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
Employed as the nighttime security guard of Broussard Private Investigations, Phineas Bishop has been working through overwhelming PTSD episodes from his Army service while still utilizing his military skills. When a violent break-in occurs at the office, Phin resolves to help track down the intruder. Their only lead and witness is Cora Winslow, a spirited librarian who also needs answers.

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

Phin is surprised by his fondness for the woman’s fierce determination and research prowess. But New Orleans’s Garden District holds secrets as old as the streets themselves. With help from the entire Broussard P.I. team, Phin and Cora enter a labyrinth of fraud and homicide that threatens to bury them all.


My Review:
Buried Too Deep is a romantic suspense. Though a part of a series, it works as a stand alone. Phin feels like a failure because of his PTSD and how he runs away from his friends (and family) every time it gets bad. He now has a support dog who helps him a lot, but he's embarrassed to need a dog's help. After the initial confusion of the crime scene, no one really suspects him of shooting someone at Broussard Private Investigations. However, he saw a potential witness flee the scene, so he helps track her down to question her. Cora wanted help investigating who killed her father, why, and why someone tried so hard to make her think that her father was still alive but abandoned her and her mother. The PIs (including Phin) and Cora work together to figure it out.

Since we get the viewpoint of the bad guys, we know that a television evangelist had something to hide all those years ago. He uses his nephew now to help him keep that crime covered up. The nephew has helped his uncle in the past by digging up dirt on those who threaten his uncle's reputation. He decides to find out why his uncle's running scared now. In the process, more people are killed to hide past secrets.

The suspense was created by the known threat to Cora (and others). The main characters were likable and reacted realistically to events. Phin and Cora worked together well, and Cora encouraged and built Phin up. I grant that the TV evangelist wasn't really a Christian and he certainly had a bad situation that he wanted to hide. But when we finally found out the secret motivating so much killing, I had a hard time believing that Cora's father (a proven secret keeper) was killed to hide a part of it while others were left alive.

There was a fair amount of bad language. There was a detailed sex scene.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.