a lovely start to a series that i hope will only get better from here.

this is a very slow moving crime book focused heavily on characters and their struggles and while it also has the crime element - the murder and the investigation- as an element of the plot, it moved more around all the characters and their own lives.

i really enjoyed the chief inspector. he is such a great character with his specific and careful observations and quiet character but still so smart and knowing what he can do. he is the biggest reason why i want to continue on in this series because i want more of this generously nice man!
it was so nice to see a policeman not be overly macho or butch, thinking he’s the smartest person on the room or always the best as it’s sadly a little to often the case in other crime books.

also the crime was well done. i kept second guessing my suspect because honestly basically all the people in three pines were very good suspects!

what is didn’t enjoy as much in this book was the share amount characters. we have what? between 16 to 20 characters in this book that we follow or being introduced and hearing their names later on again. and after the first 15 it started to get a bit confusing for me. this isn’t a huge book so having all those characters be introduced in a very short time was a little too much for me especially since it wasn’t really necessary to have that many people be part of the story.

all in all it’s a nice slow crime book that’s very similar to a cozy in tone and worth a try but i would guess that not everyone will love the quiet slowness of the books pacing.