Note: Thank you to NetGalley, Storm Publishing, and author Sam Baron for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

The saying goes “Write what you know.” With that in mind, after reading The Safe House, I had to look at author Sam Baron’s background and see if he had any background in law enforcement. I couldn’t find any indication that was the case, which explains a lot of the problems I had with the book.

This is the third book in a series centered around California FBI agent Susan Parker. Susan is a widow raising her daughter and trying to balance her career responsibilities with that of being a parent. She has help from her late husband’s family, although his mother is a bit crazy.

Susan receives a call from Ramon, one of the members of her team. An immigrant himself, Ramon has ties to the illegal immigrant community and is called in when an underground safe house that contains twenty-nine illegal immigrants waiting for papers is blown up, killing all of them. With it being an election year, no one wants to touch the investigation. Susan calls in a favor and gets her team assigned to training for a week so they can unofficially investigate the killings. They learn a local priest known as “The Saint” was part of an underground network helping illegal immigrants. It would seem someone has taken on his persona but is killing the immigrants rather than helping them.

I wanted to like The Safe House, and I did in many ways. It’s a compelling thriller in many ways. The character of The Saint had so much potential. The parts where the team was trying to investigate who he was and tracking leads were good. The uniqueness of the team Susan leads is also appreciated. However, Ramon’s background would preclude him from being an agent no matter how good he was at it. This is where I had problems with the story. There were so many things that felt off, from the way the agents behave to the local chief of police who doesn’t investigate anything. Not to mention, he’s friends with Susan’s mother-in-law and doesn’t mind doing her bidding when it comes to interfering in Susan’s life. The depth of emotion when they are uncovering the bodies from the safe house is great as the impact on the team members is shown. However, later on, Susan has a priest blown up just about in front of her face and barely blinks.

The personal distractions of several people detract from the investigation, which is part of the problem as well. While I enjoyed reading the book, I can’t say I want to read more of the series. The characters are well-developed but don’t feel right as FBI agents. The premise is great, but there are too many distractions from the central story. I’ve read many great thrillers and police procedurals, but this isn’t one of them.