2nd Chance

2nd Chance is the second novel in the Women's Murder Club series by James Patterson, written with Andrew Gross, and the sequel to 1st to Die.

Lindsay Boxer is still recovering from the loss of her partner and has only just returned to duty when the killings begin. The victims include an eleven-year-old girl and an elderly woman, and her investigation turns up a connection to a prison gang called Chimera. The case widens when a police officer is shot by a sniper and her commanding officer is then murdered. The opening is a shooting into a crowd of children leaving a church in San Francisco, where a single death looks as though it was the point, and the second victim is an elderly woman found hanged.

The club that gives the series its name is a working arrangement rather than a social one: a homicide inspector, a medical examiner, an assistant district attorney and a crime reporter share information across professional boundaries. The book also advances the private lives of the four, including a pregnancy and a threat against one of them, which is how the series keeps a continuing cast alongside a case that is resolved within the volume.