Author: Archer Mayor

Publisher: Minotaur Books

ISBN: 978-1-250-25501-3

This novel is not the gritty mystery/crime story I prefer, but it was an interesting and entertaining read. The author’s experience and skill are evident. What’s it about?

After I progressed past the first throw-away chapters, especially the first that might have been intended as a hook but only introduced me to PI Sally Kravitz, I started to see what game was afoot. Alex Hale, an egotistical cat burglar who likes complex gigs, and Rachel Reiling, photographer/reporter and wannabe investigative reporter, are both introduced in Chapter Two. We now have the two main characters, Rachel and Sally, and a future victim, as the series stalwart, Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI) agent Joe Gunther plays a secondary role. The two young women work with and sometimes against Joe’s VBI crew by going where that crew cannot go, everyone trying to connect the murders of a drug dealer and Hale. It all leads to uncovering mysterious goings-on at a prep school located near the border of Massachusetts, a school filled with snotty, rich kids whose parents have far too much money.

The plot is a bit too predictable, though, and I generally homed in on the motivation for the conspiracy, but not its details, as soon as the man who hires Sally to investigate the school makes the presentation of upgrades he wants to donate to the prep school’s infrastructure. There are no real earth-shaking crimes or conspiracies here, just some local ones. They still need to be solved and discovered, respectively, but I’m surprised they provide enough material to fill an entire novel. They do, though, which provides evidence for the author’s art and skill and gave me hours of reading pleasure.

I enjoyed the character portrayals of Sally Kravitz and Rachel Reiling, and I hope to see more of them in future works by the author. They form a good team. Sally’s father is a bit like Hale, only with a good dose of morality, and he often helps her. Rachel is the daughter of Joe’s new girlfriend, who just happens to do autopsies, some for the VBI. She and Joe provide most of the romance (an interesting one), but there’s not much romance to be found here or elsewhere, beyond tawdry lust and sexual exploitation. For good reason, Vermont has a teddy bear factory—rural crime beyond drug trafficking and abuse doesn’t seem as prevalent in this rural setting, yet the author finds something to write about.

I do like how the author differentiates the VBI team members. Their differences can be both strengths and weaknesses, of course, but this only shows what a good feel the author has for human psychology, probably produced by years of observation. I can contrast this with the quick-brush descriptions of the victims. The real villains responsible for their demise are well-drawn, though, as well as Rachel and Sally, and that makes sense in any crime story.

While the plot held my interest, I found myself getting lost. Perhaps most of that was due to my not having followed the Joe Gunther series that started in 1988. Some series are harder to jump into later on than others—there are twenty-nine books before this one! For me, Joe Gunther’s adventures are a new discovery. And perhaps the descriptor “procedural” is a good one, because the story plods along a bit at times,  as real police work often does, and as the author moves toward the climax where everything is tied together into a tidy bundle.    

Ironically Chapter One, that throw-away chapter, seemed the most focused. Call it a stylistic choice, but the author jumps around among wildly different characters. In fact, there is some disconcerting head-hopping (abrupt changes of point-of-view) even within sections of a chapter. (I was reading an ARC, so maybe that will be fixed…along with the few copy-editing errors I noted?) As an author and avid reader, I could recalibrate as I read, but other readers might be saying “Huh?” a lot more than I did. I  also often lose touch of Joe at the beginning, but that became less of a problem when I realized that this story is really about Rachel and Sally, not Joe.

All that said, I enjoyed this novel. It’s always interesting to discover new authors, and this one was “new” for me. I’m sure followers of the series as well as other readers will enjoy this book too. I must confess I love Brit-style police procedurals, the grittier the better, and this one gave me a temporary albeit weak fix for that addiction, with a setting that’s quintessentially American.