One Split Second

An Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestselling series.

A girl's unsolved disappearance. A tragic shooting. Two crimes, forty-five years apart, with a blood-chilling connection in a gripping new Tracy Crosswhite novel by New York Times bestselling author Robert Dugoni.

Detective Tracy Crosswhite is assigned to defend an old friend. Sheriff Jenny Almond has been charged with first-degree murder for shooting an unarmed veteran on a stormy night of confusion, paranoia, and split-second choices. Tracy is certain there's more to the story of Anthony Alvarez's killing--and her investigation draws her back to a cold case that still haunts the community.

More than forty years ago, Alvarez was the prime suspect in the unsolved disappearance of a teenage babysitter. The lead investigator, Jenny's late father Buzz Almond, always believed Alvarez had been framed. Decades later, his suspicions of a conspiracy are driving Tracy to find answers. Digging deeper into both the past and the present, she discovers a complex web of sinister motives and long-buried secrets, unearthing them one by one.

As a decades-old mystery casts its dark shadow on a small town, only the truth will finally set the innocent free.

(c) 2026 by La Mesa Fiction LLC., all rights reserved.

Robert Dugoni is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Amazon Charts bestselling author of several series, including Tracy Crosswhite, Charles Jenkins, David Sloane, and Keera Duggan. His stand-alone novels include A Killing on the Hill, Hold Strong (coauthored with Jeff Langholz and Chris Crabtree), Damage Control, The 7th Canon, and The World Played Chess. The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, a Newsweek magazine staff pick for favorite books of all time, was Suspense Magazine's 2018 Book of the Year and won Dugoni an AudioFile Earphones Award for his narration. The Washington Post named his nonfiction exposé The Cyanide Canary a best book of the year. Dugoni is the recipient of the Nancy Pearl Book Award for fiction and a multitime winner for best novel set in the Pacific Northwest. Dugoni's books are sold in more than twenty-five countries and have been translated into more than thirty languages, reaching over twelve million readers worldwide. He lives in Seattle. Visit his website at www.robertdugonibooks.com.