This is the book that I picked out of the four offered for the free kindle book preview thing that is offered by Amazon Prime. And to be honest, I really did not think that the choices were the best in my opinion and that this one would not be all that good. I have been trying to go for books I never really read for these Kindle First picks because they are free and all I would be wasting is phone battery and time. The other three choices were The Fire Seekers by Richard Farr, The Glassblower by Petra Durst-Benning and The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter by Craig Lancaster.
So when it came to picking a book, the two books it came down to were this one and The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter. This book because I generally do not read a lot of mystery because it seems like the mystery ones that I pick are good but unbearably cheesy. The Fallow Season seemed sort of weird in that it is a sports theme mystery? I really did not know what to make of it. But I definitely to not read sport themed books...generally because they never really trip my trigger.
So one thing that I can tell you about this book is that it is a book that pleasantly surprised me, I finished it in just under a day; mainly because I could not put it down when I got to the very end. One of the aspects about it that I loved was the use of flashbacks. They were done very well and reminiscent of the Cold Case Files playbacks that they play throughout the show or at the end when they solve the case. So as you read the book, you are getting this flashbacks that are logically triggered by what is currently happening and you are putting together the pieces of the past as these flashbacks come to you. And you are also getting more information about the characters that are involved.
There is romance, and it is done as an undertone, so it does not take away from the mystery of it all. And the romance moments were sweet, with it steadily increasing a little bit as the climax of the book comes to you. What I absolutely loved at the end was that they did not just immediately start living together and showing the happily ever after. The ending fast forwards to the main character looking for a house with a big enough yard so that when he visits with his two dogs they have room to run around. THAT is a much more realistic ending romance wise.
The age of the main characters, and just about everyone involved makes sense with this being a case that happened 20 years before present events. But I felt like it was a very nice change and a breath of fresh air to have main characters that range from the 35 year range up to 50s and 60s; with the majority being in their 40s. You do not really realize how many main characters are generally from the mid 20s to mid 30s range until you read a book where they are 40. Just on that basis alone I would recommend it, because you do not have so much of the whole "GAH that stupid young woman/man making that stupid mistake!!!" moments that I once in awhile find myself having.
Getting to the meat of the matter...The main character is a woman named Tracy, and 20 years ago her younger sister was abducted and presumably killed. It took 20 years before her body was actually found. Tracy was 20 at the time, and she spent the next 20 years collecting all the information she could find because to her the pieces were not adding up. It appears that the person was framed, and I totally followed along with Tracy because that is really what it looked like. When Tracy's sister is finally found, she goes back to her small town for a funeral and runs into her childhood friend who also happens to be a lawyer, Dan. She asks him to look at all the evidence that she has on the case, along with the new evidence found with the body in order to get it reopened to find who the real killer is.
Dan agrees to do this and it ends up going to a court of appeals and the man, Edmund, who was convicted on the crime is set free that very day. Well...it turns out that despite most of the evidence having been planted...and the man clearly being set up...it DID actually do the crime. It is one of those seemingly rare circumstances where the man they latched on to early in the investigation actually did the crime and because there was no evidence he would have gone free; so they planted the evidence in order to make sure he did not go free. The plot twist that was done was expertly executed, because I was following Tracy's line of thought throughout the whole book up until that moment when you realize she was wrong.
I would highly recommend this to someone who generally does not read mystery. I don't know if someone who is an avid mystery reader would like it; but you should give it a shot anyways.
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