Seattle police psychologist Daphne Mathews has her hands full having a pregnant, addicted, runaway teenager, a murder victim’s brother whose strange behavior unnerves her, and a deputy sheriff she once treated who’s now stalking her. She’s frightened enough to move along with Detective John LaMoia, a development that doesn’t exactly thrill Lou Boldt, their manager and Daphne’sex-lover. But Lou’s as well busy along with his own cases to brood over John and Daphne: the recent disappearances of two local women, and about The Artwork of Deception the loss of life of Billy Chen, the nephew of Mama Lu, a vintage friend and a powerful figure in Seattle’s Chinese language community, which were a major accident but works out to have already been murder.The thing the disappearances and murder have as a common factor is location; all three victims were last observed in an integral part of downtown built within the Underground, a dark and dangerous warren of structures abandoned following the open fire that leveled Seattle more than a century ago.

While Seattle’s Underground has been the setting for many mysteries by various other authors (Earl Emerson, J.A. Jance), Pearson makes the the majority of its creepy-crawly atmosphere within a gripping thriller whose solid plotting pulls all of Daphne’s, LaMoia’s, and Boldt’s instances together. In addition, it wisely reconfigures the non-public interactions among the three central heroes, which bodes well because of their future adventures with this long-running series (Middle of Nowhere, The Pied Piper). –Jane Adams