In Lisa Gardner’s The Third Victim, she delves into a topic that is extremely current and always heartbreaking: school shootings. Bakersville, Oregon is a small town with all the charm and peace a small town has to offer. Their police department consists of Sheriff Shep O’Grady, two full time officers and some volunteer officers. Rainie Conner is one of those officers. When she is called to the K-8 school for a shooting, she can hardly believe it. Things this serious do not happen in Bakersville and frankly, no one is sure how to handle it. Rainie is asked by Shep to be primary on the case, which sounds odd to her, but she agrees. It soon becomes evident why he made the request: it appears the shooter is Danny O’Grady, Shep’s thirteen-year-old son. Two small girls and a teacher have been killed and others are wounded.

Did Danny really shoot those girls and his teacher? The case is not as clear as one would think. Danny was a smart child but a loner and very angry with his father. He has problems controlling his rage but this problem has gone unchecked. His parents are having marital problems and this puts added pressure on Danny. It seems possible there was someone else involved, the “mysterious man in black” the other kids claim to have seen. Based on the evidence, Danny didn’t work alone but with whom did he work? As Rainie and her co-worhers get closer to the truth it becomes obvious that Rainie is being watched and possibly set up by this person.

Everyone in town is as baffled as Rainie. How did this happen? She’s known Danny since he was small – how could he have done this? Aiding Rainie is Abe Saunders, an Oregon state homicide detective and Pierce Quincy, an FBI agent who is a profiling expert. It’s soon obvious that Rainie is out of her league, as she has never handled a murder before. Still, she refuses to give up jurisdiction to Abe; she feels she owes Shep something and she made a promise to him to be the primary. There is a lot more to Rainie than meets the eye. She comes from Bakersville originally, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who had a drunken mother who beat her. When Rainie was seventeen, she came home to find her mother’s head shot off. Shep, just an officer at the time, came just in time to arrest young Rainie. The charge never stuck but there are some who believe she did indeed shoot her mother. Rainie’s past is as much part of the story as the school shootings. As Rainie works to uncover the truth of things, memories and feelings about her past begin to close in on her.

Pierce Quincy is a man with some demons as well. He has spent his life profiling murderers and going from one crime scene to another. He’s got some really heavy family issues going on at the moment and if there is one place he shouldn’t be, it’s Bakersville. He and Rainie are very attracted to each other but Rainie won’t let herself get close to him. There is a secret surrounding what happened to Rainie fourteen years ago and Quincy wants to help Rainie by finding out what it is.

Warning to readers; though this book had a romance component, the suspense really received the emphasis here. Yes, Rainie and Quincy danced around each other and it was easy to see how wounded they both were, but nothing got resolved between them. There were a lot of unanswered questions centering on Rainie’s situation and her relationship with Quincy. I was left frustrated by this, but when I glanced at the excerpt from Gardner’s next book, I saw that Quincy will be in it again, and the story is going to hit close to home for him. I am really hoping Rainie shows up and that is she doing all right.

The nature of the story is brutal and some people may have trouble with it. With the recent spate of school shootings, the timing may or may not be a problem. And, the subject matter and some of the language may also make some readers uncomfortable. As for me, I enjoyed most of the characters, although Abe Saunders never came alive for me. He remained a one dimensional character, and while I understand what his role in the case was, I am not sure what his role in the book was. Shep also never seemed fully realized, and he is a pivotal part of not only the shooting at the school but Rainie’s past. I guessed at the school shooting outcome relatively early in the book, but Rainie’s story held some intrigue at the end. The book plodded a bit at the middle but picked up steam again towards the end.

Over all, I enjoyed the suspense portion and I really enjoyed Rainie and Quincy. It wouldn’t be accurate to say I enjoyed the subject matter but I was fascinated by how it would turn out and how Danny would end up fitting into it. More importantly, this book raised a lot of questions for me and for others I talked about it with over the nature of school shootings. If you have read Lisa Gardner before, then you know what to expect. If not, then seriously think about the subject matter before delving into it. If you think you can handle the subject matter, I encourage you to give it try. As difficult as it was at times to get through (and there were a couple of scenes that just plain made me mad) I am glad I read it.