scknitter's Reviews (1.48k)

 Definitely not a typical Riley Sager. With A Vengeance was an Agatha Christie type locked room mystery, but definitely not up to Agatha Christie standards. I honestly thought it was silly after awhile. 

 

Avison Fluke is a brilliant but flawed detective.  He is strong-willed and has absolutely no respect for authority, which often gets him in trouble.  However, he always seems to find a way to be allowed back on the case and does manage to catch the bad guy in this very dark and twisty tale.  This time, however, his success comes at a major cost which will leave you begging for more Avison Fluke. 

 Once again Harlan Coben has hit it out of the ballpark with a novel that features Sami Kierce, a disgraced ex-policeman, who is trying to make ends meet and support his wife and infant son by teaching classes in criminology for would be amateur detectives. Even though Sami is no longer a detective his instincts and ability to analyze seemingly unrelated facts are still amazing. This is a novel of what ifs. There are so many ways that everything could have been different but as you are fed facts bit by bit you will perhaps understand why things happened as they did. It goes back to something that happened 20 years earlier when Sami was in Spain with college friends, and it also involves the murder of his fiancee 18 years earlier. Sami also appears in Coben’s previous novel Fool Me Once, but this is easily listened to as a stand alone. Thanks to NetGalley for an ALC. 

 I am not always a big fan of domestic thrillers because they usually depict a weak woman being taken advantage of and I felt from the beginning that Matthew was ‘too good to be true’. However, I really liked Emma so I kept listening because I was sure she could take care of herself, and I was curious to see what she would do if Matthew turned out to be a jerk. Turns out Emma could definitely take care of herself, and she wasn’t the only one surprised by what was happening. Thanks to Net Galley and Harper Collins audio for an ALC. 

 If you love true police procedurals where the detectives notice every little anomaly and apply unique techniques when interviewing suspects you will love Born in a Burial Gown. Avison Fluke is not well liked by his fellow police, but he gets the job done with a crew of social misfits who are equally brilliant. I loved the setting (Cumbria in northern England) I loved all of the characters and their back-stories, and I loved the story and the narration. Can’t wait to hear more from Avison Fluke. 

 The Wrong Sister is a terrific domestic thriller with lots of possible suspects. There are sisters who are so different you wonder how they can be so close. You have husbands who definitely seem to have something to hide, and you have a baby kidnapped from the same village 30 years earlier. These facts all combine to create a terrific thriller that will have you spinning in circles as you try to figure out what really happened both 30 years ago and in the current time frame. 

 I have loved Matt Goldman’s previous books, and this one is no exception, especially since Nils Shapiro has a fun cameo role. Goldman has been a TV writer so his portrayal of Ethan Harris as the show runner for The Murder Show is definitely well done and believable. Ethan is home in MN for the first time in over 20 years because of the writer’s strike. When he rekindles a relationship with his old high school flame, Ro, who is now a Minneapolis detective he thinks he has a great idea to plug for the next season of his show when she asks him to help her investigate the unsolved hit and run death of a friend from when they were in high school. The home- town vibes, the great characters and Goldman’s sometime witty and always excellent plotting as well as great narration all contribute to an audio book you won’t want to stop listening to. 

 Nothing ever happens in the small snowy Minnesota town until Shelby surprises a would-be burglar in her friend’s café and is locked in a freezer and left for dead. Then it seems that the action never stops. The novel is filled with eccentric oddball characters from the senior living home that Shelby manages and there are many laughable moments as well as pulse pounding ones as mysterious disappearances, accidents and deaths start occurring. The ending, considering the things that were revealed, was ingenious. 

 The Last Days of Kira Mullan is another brilliantly written police procedural about DI Maude O’Connor and how she sees evidence her lazy, misogynistic fellow police officers miss. It is a story about how she is essentially all alone while pursuing clues and trying to help other women and find out the truth. It is also a very realistic and sad look at how people with mental health issues are treated and ignored. The way Nancy North was treated by her partner, her neighbors, and the mental health professionals was so intense and disturbing at first that I had to take a break from listening. (Perhaps if I had been reading instead it wouldn’t have been so bad, but I could literally hear her panic and feel her despair.) 

 

Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter is told in three parts.  The first part tells of her disappearance and is essentially a look at the families involved and how they cope – or don’t cope with not only Charlotte’s disappearance but also the death of another member of the small town.  The second part, which takes place 30 years later is still more of a family saga as it is evident that what happened still affects them deeply.  Finally, in the last part when a murder occurs you have a brilliant police procedural led by DI Maude O’Connor who refuses to let the incompetent and misogynistic local police stop her from doing her job.  The absolutely fascinating police work that O’Connor manages to pull off with evidence lost, and essentially no meaningful investigation from thirty years earlier was amazing and more than made up for the slow burn in the beginning of the story. I can’t wait to read more of DI Maude O’Connor’s police work.