Book Review: What I’ve Done

Title: What I’ve Done
Author: Melinda Leigh
Genre: Suspense, Thriller

What It’s About: Sharp Investigations, consisting of Morgan Dane, Lance Krueger and Lincoln Sharp, is contracted to find out the truth behind the murder of a local boy by Eliza, the wife of Sharp’s deceased partner on the Police workforce. Eliza’s daughter, Haley, had woken up at Noah’s house after a night of drinking and sex, to find herself fully covered in blood and with no memory of what happened that night. Morgan fights to keep Haley out of jail for the duration of the investigation as Haley has Addison’s disease, which when not medicated properly, can put Haley’s life in danger.

The team, Eliza and Haley are threatened by Adam, Noah’s unstable brother, and Lance loses his home to arson, as they continue to investigate Noah’s murder. The team questions suspects, and those who knew Noah, finding out that Noah wasn’t as innocent as he seemed—he ordered extra alcohol in the drinks he got for the girls he was interested in, getting them drunk even when they should have been able to handle the drink.

The case breaks open when the body of Shannon, a local girl gets found, sharing uncanny resemblance to another girl’s death a few years prior, and the Medical Examiner’s report reveals that the two girls had the same drug in their system, and were murdered in the same manner.

Morgan and Lance question Noah’s friend—Justin—again, and the guy is ready to spill the beans, when a shot grazes his temple, rendering him unconscious. It is then that they realize that Justin was the guy who supplied the drugs in the girls’ system. In the meantime, Sharp is visiting Eliza and Haley to check in on them and tell them the new, when the propane tank explodes, setting the house on fire. Eliza makes it out, with the assistance of Assistant Defense Attorney Esposito, who lives nearby, Lance and Morgan. They pull out the dead bodyguard as well, but are unable to find Sharp and Haley, who are stuck together in the basement.

Haley refuses to give up on Sharp, and despite him being impaled, she manages to get him out of the basement, after which she is kidnapped. Lance and Morgan arrive in time to find Sharp barely alive, and they shore him up as much as they can until the EMTs arrive, but he tells them to go after Haley. Lance sets off after Haley and her kidnapper—Isaac, one of Noah’s friends—while Morgan realizes that she will not be able to catch up to him, so she needs another way.

Haley gets trapped between Isaac and Chase, while trying to run away from Isaac, and the two men attempt to kill her. Unfortunately for them, Lance and Morgan come to the rescue. She manages to kill Chase center mass before he is able to raise his shotgun to kill Haley, and Lance subdues Isaac.

It turns out that Justin, Isaac and Chase had been behind the murder of both women, using a combination of drugs and alcohol to subdue them in order to rape them. The first girl’s murder was unplanned, but they liked it so much that they did it with Shannon on purpose, and Noah had been eliminated because he had seen some photos of the first girl, so when Shannon went missing, he suspected his friends. Haley, in the meantime, was the perfect scapegoat when they murdered Noah because she was sleepwalking. One of the boys tried to gaslight her by hacking into her Xbox and speaking to her through the WiFi.

A month later, Lance proposes to Morgan, and she agrees.

My Verdict: The fourth book of the Morgan Dane series is just as intense as the first three. I really enjoy the author’s creativity in telling the different crime stories and view points from the character’s perspectives. I also enjoyed getting to know Lincoln Sharp a bit better, and seeing what makes him the detective and private investigator that he is.

Overall, I enjoyed this book as much as I have enjoyed the other three. I look forward to the next one.