Can I start by saying that it is about time to find a character who can face stress and fear and still order a bacon cheeseburger and home fries? I have had more than enough of characters, particularly female characters, who get too upset by what is happening to them to even eat. But Caitlin Bergman is not your average character, and even in very hard circumstances she’s going to have lunch.

Come and Get Me, the first mystery in what I hope will be a long series by August Norman, starts with a surprise and keeps surprising. Caitlin Bergman, famed investigative journalist and author, returns to her home town of Bloomington, Indiana, to finally receive her degree from her almost-alma-mater. Almost, because Bergman left suddenly twenty years earlier, just short of receiving her degree, abandoning friends and all ties to the town and school. In her talk to the current crop of journalism students, Bergman finally admits her reason for leaving:  two decades ago, just before her own graduation, she was raped. Bergman tells the students she has returned “to finish that story.”

One crime would be enough for any mystery to be getting on with, but Come and Get Me quickly gives us a second:  an Indiana University student, Angela Chapman, went missing two years earlier. Her best friend, Lakshmi Anjale, the obvious star of the Indiana University journalism program, sees a great possibility in the arrival of Caitlin Bergman to Bloomington. Perhaps the journalist who exposed the corruption of the entire LAPD can find one missing young woman. Caitlin Bergman tries to avoid becoming involved, but Lakshmi is persistent. She and the missing girl’s mother have pursued the case as far as they can, the local police seem strangely blocked in their own investigation, and the mystery still feels too alive to ignore. Caitlin Bergman is, reluctantly, on the story.

Allow me to pause and mention the writing. I have had the good fortune to hear more work by August Norman, and he has the chops. It’s not just a female lead who doesn’t push away her food untasted when times are tough, which is such a generic choice on the part of most writers that I could start collecting the proverbial dime every time I come across it. It’s how carefully August Norman considers even the minor characters we meet, the single exchanges of dialogue, and the ostensibly simple descriptions. When Caitlin Bergman visits Angela Chapman’s mother and sees the investigation headquarters she and Lakshmi have constructed for the missing Angela, we read this:

What had once been a basement home theater now housed the Find Angela Chapman headquarters. Couch, love seat, end tables—all shoved against a wall. White poster board covered any available wall space, and theories, suspicions, and questions covered the sheets of sturdy material like a science fair project no one wanted to work on.

Gorgeous writing. Neither Doris Chapman nor Lakshmi Anjale want to have to turn their homes and lives into the Find Angela center, but they have. And in this way Caitlin Bergman is drawn into the hunt. Norman doesn’t tell us, he shows us. He makes us feel it. He trusts the reader to understand, to pick up the clues he plants, to move along with Caitlin. We do.

I should mention here that I knew who the bad guy was fairly quickly. I wasn’t too put out. First time mystery novel, of course I would figure it out. But then Caitlin Bergman comes to the same conclusion. We were both wrong, and back out in the weeds without a clue. I won’t tell you who did it, so don’t worry. But this is a complex novel, with many good, well-developed suspects. A possible connection to the drug world keeps the Bloomington Police in the mix and brings in an interesting ally for Bergman, an LAPD cop she busted in her award-winning corruption exposé. And all along Bergman is also focused on her long-ago rape, the reason she came back to Indiana in the first place.

August Norman does choose to let the reader know who the bad guy is before the end, but this is a book where that is completely necessary. It does not let the air out of the story. You may not notice, as I did not notice, the clues planted early on that lead to the answers, but Bergman finds them. And she is smart enough, skilled enough, and tough enough to save the day. I won’t say that she’s a female Jack Reacher, but she’s no wilting violet. She will be going places in this series that many female leads wouldn’t. She can work a complex and dangerous story, and doesn’t flinch from nightmarish situations. She’s been hurt, but she’s moving forward. I can’t wait to see where Caitlin Bergman’s next story leads her. Whatever she faces, I know she won’t be skipping lunch.