’Lie Down with the Devil’ by Linda Barnes
Published by St. Martin's Minotaur. August 2008. ISBN: 978-0-312-33289-1

Carlotta Carlyle returns in the author's eleventh novel.  The 6' tall redheaded guitar-playing ex-cop Boston PD cop/part-time cab driver/part-time private detective is now engaged to her mob-connected boyfriend, Sam Gianelli.  Her relationship with her ex-boss, Captain Joseph Mooney, head of the Homicide Department, is the one constant in her life.  They are close friends, having worked together for six years, both having resisted anything more personal, and it is this that led Mooney to give Gianelli a heads-up when the Feds have him in
their sights for the murder of a young woman.  Sam left the country and won't risk returning to the country, and Carlotta won't leave the States to join him.  The title derives from an expression used by Carlotta's Jewish grandmother [her mother was Jewish, her father  Catholic]:  "He who lives with a devil becomes a devil," and Carlotta finds herself wondering if that now applies to her.

Carlotta is hired by a pretty young blond woman to check on her fiancé, to see if he is faithful to her.  Not long after, that same young woman is found dead, and Carlotta is asked to identify the body since her business card was found on the body.  Carlotta does so, but it is soon discovered that the woman is not who she claimed to be, and Carlotta becomes a suspect in her hit-and-run death.

The author has created a complex protagonist in this series, and this entry is no different.  Carlotta finds her relationships with both Sam and Moody become strained.  With respect to Sam, she wonders "How do
you do monstrous things and not become a monster?"  The Boston/Cape Cod/Vegas settings are strong and the characters well-drawn.  Sam in this book is both pivotal and tangential, making only a few appearances, most telephonic.  The reader is left wondering where the author will take them and their relationships from here, and looking forward to their return.
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Gloria Feit.