Detectives Sergio Martin and Carly Sanderson are back for book #5 in Dan Alatorre’s Double Blind series. This installment is heavy on Sergio and Carly’s personal issues and character development, woven around an investigation into a murdered schoolgirl at an exclusive day school. The criminal investigation puts Sergio in peril based on his impulsive and reckless decisions, as Carly faces a custody battle in her divorce action. It’s a bad time for them to be continuing the romance that blossomed during the prior book. As Carly spends time talking with her lawyer, Sergio and sexy PR consultant Averie Fox spend time together trying to unwind the tentacles of the murder case in the closed-mouth world of the exclusive Hillmont Day School. Both stories are tragic and intense in this page-turner that flies by with lightning speed.

Sergio and Carly are called in by the local Sherrif, who is out of his element in the media-intensive case of the murdered schoolgirl, Bella. The obvious suspect, the school janitor who was seen crouching over the body on the side of a small lake, is in jail and the school administrators are happy to find him guilty without a trial and put the ugly episode behind them. But Sergio quickly concludes that the slow-witted janitor is unlikely to be the killer. With security video missing and no apparent motive, it seems that somebody is covering up the crime. The chairman of the school’s board of directors is particularly uncooperative and instructs everyone to clam up and not help the cops – still blaming the janitor. Something is very wrong, and the investigation goes in several directions in a short period of time before Sergio decides to take a big risk that could easily backfire and put both detectives in hot water with their new sergeant, who already has both of them under a microscope. It’s a mile-a-minute ride down the abandoned mine shaft with no safety net that will keep you wanting more right to the end.

The police investigation story would be entertaining enough even without the intense interpersonal subplot that stands on its own for readers who are not familiar with the earlier books. Carly fears losing custody of her boys after her estranged husband hires a scorched-earth divorce lawyer who claims that Carly is an unfit mother due to her highly dangerous job that often pulls her away from her boys. It’s a heart-wrenching situation that pulls Carly and Sergio apart even as they try to focus on the dead girl and find her killer.

The combination of the relationship plot and the murder investigation plot yields a compelling synergy. Fans of the series will be glued to their Kindles, while new readers will be reaching for their internet connections to order the earlier books. It’s another wonderful installment in the ongoing Double Blind series that will entertain everyone. The text is clean and the prose rich. Lines like this dot the text in just the right places: “Bright stars appeared in the sky. Diamonds, spilling out of an invisible box, onto the underside of a giant, black velvet umbrella.”

I thoroughly enjoyed Five Sparrows and will be anxiously awaiting the next book in this series.