If I’m being very specific, When All the Girls Have Gone by Jayne Ann Krentz is really a romantic mystery not romantic suspense, and that’s what I loved about it.

There’s been a trend I think lately of publishing darker books with characters in more dire circumstances, and romantic suspense certainly isn’t exempt from that. Sometimes the hero and heroine’s combined emotional sturm und drang is so intense it’s overwhelming. Adding scary suspense themes to that–murder, rape, mutilation–and it’s more vicarious stress than I want all of the time.

When All the Girls Have Gone certainly does deal with dark themes — it is a murder mystery after all — but it’s got a slower build than most romantic suspense novels. I would describe both the romance and the mystery here as slow burn, and I really enjoyed watching each unravel.

Charlotte Sawyer is putting her life back together after her fiancé (and con man as it turns out) leaves her at the alter. Her quiet rebuilding is disrupted when one of her stepsister Jocelyn’s friends is murdered and Jocelyn herself goes off the grid. Charlotte teams up with ex-profiler and now-PI Max Cutler to solve the murder and find her stepsister.

A lot of this book deals with a cold case–a series of campus rapes from over a decade ago that could be linked to the murder. The rapes are discussed but it’s not graphic. Everything happens off stage.

Much of the book is about Charlotte and Max uncovering clues and them following them and discussing what they mean. There are moments of action, but much of this book felt contemplative. I loved the slow unraveling of clues, the dismissing of red herrings, and the detective work.

To me, suspense means that the main characters are in jeopardy, but the source of that threat may already be known to the reader or later revealed in a way that the reader couldn’t possibly have figured out. This is a mystery: the clues to solving it are in the text and available to the reader.

I also liked how the different threads to the mystery came together. Why did Jocelyn run away? Why was her friend killed and why was her death made to look like an overdose? What does the cold cases have to do with it? Why do Jocelyn’s friends seem skittish?

I also liked the main characters. I found Charlotte appealing because she’s a calm, rational thinker. She deals with things as they come and takes time to process new facts. She doesn’t panic and she doesn’t give up. Throughout the book other characters refer to Charlotte as naive, but I think she was really the best equipped to deal with the mayhem out of everyone.

Max was interesting, too. He has a mystery in his own past to solve, an arc I expect will be in the next two books (presumably about his brothers).

The romance sometimes felt a little weak, maybe because there wasn’t much sexual tension or heat to the book. Part of why I believe romance could happen in a romantic suspense world is because emotions and feelings are heightened. Max and Charlotte’s cool rationality didn’t lend well to a sudden romance. I realize that sounds like I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth regarding high stakes, high emotion suspense–but I think it’s possible to have very sexy, slow burn romance with increasing tension from a mystery.

I could have used a little more depth to Max and Charlotte’s relationship, but aside from that, I found When All the Girls Have Gone to be a solid romantic mystery without any terrifying elements, and I’ll definitely be picking up the next book in the series.