This story starts about two weeks after the events of the previous book. The opening chapters heavily reference those events - without giving spoilers for book three. Not having read the previous book, I did feel left in the dark a little too much.

That said, I didn't enjoy this is much as books 1 and 2 in this series.

The action is late to start. Ellery does a lot of guessing on flimsy evidence.

And the last chapter is annoyingly called "Epilogue" while it really was a "Chapter Twenty".