"In the mostly undisturbed magnificence of the Pacific Northwest is a spate of murders, dark and ugly as any could imagine."
Detective Megan Carpenter lives in Port Townsend, Washington, and works for the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. Most of the crime there is fairly mundane -- until the cases in the hills above nearby Snow Creek shatter the peace. It starts with a missing person report. Ruth Turner is concerned about her sister, Ida Wheaton, who lives off the grid up in those isolated hills with her husband, Merritt, and their two children, Joshua (19) and Sarah (17). Ruth claims that Merritt is very controlling and liberal with "discipline" and she's not heard from Ida in awhile but that she was a "little off" the last time they talked. Megan agrees to do a welfare check and they visit the secluded farmhouse finding that the two teenagers are home but the parents have supposedly taken a trip to Mexico to work at an orphanage and should have returned by now. Megan verifies with La Paloma that Ida and Merritt never made it there and, in fact, weren't even scheduled to work. The investigation into the Merritts is heightened when a burnt out truck with the body of a dead woman is found in a nearby ravine. Is it Ida? Where is her husband? And the case really takes off with one shocker after another. NO SPOILERS but you can't even guess where this is all going!
Wowza was this a complicated crime thriller! Not only is there the police investigation aspect, there's also a huge backstory about the main character, Megan Carpenter. I admit that I was more interested in the murder case than I was in Megan's history and interspersing the content of the tapes with chapters dealing with the present was jarring at times. She works the Snow Creek case by day but every evening goes home to eat, drink and listen to recordings made with her therapist. She did something bad in her past. We don't find out what. I guess the typical hot mess female detective so common in this genre. But, she's smart and she sure unraveled this mystery.
This is what I liked -- the plot was complex and very absorbing to the point where I couldn't put the book down. Gregg Olsen knows how to tell a story, and what a tale it is -- keep focused so you can try to keep track of all of the different pieces and characters. The details about Snow Creek and its inhabitants were quite interesting and the characters were quite the collection of strange folks. There was so much going on and so many different threads to pull together for Megan to solve this that it made my head spin at times. And, quite a thrill for me, I could never have anticipated all of where this was going so kudos to the author for surprising me.
It needs to be said straight up -- this books ends in a massive cliffhanger. You've been warned. I absolutely detest when this happens as I am the kind of reader that likes everything tied up neatly with all the answers at the end. Waiting for a next installment to finish a good story is problematic especially since I admit I don't always remember the details a year later. I'm sure this was done as a hook for the second book in this new series, but it did leave me feeling peeved. I also understand that there was an earlier book, published in 2014, RUN, that features the main character and focuses on events that occurred when she was a young teenager -- I did not know it was related and had not read it. Will I read #2? Yes, I'd like to as long as I'll get my answers so I can wrap it all up and perhaps understand Megan a bit better.
Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for this e-book ARC to read, review and recommend.
This is the first book in a new series. If you can, I suggest you read RUN first as it introduces the character who will become Detective Megan Carpenter.
Genre - crime thriller, police procedural, domestic drama
No comments:
Post a Comment