Review: A good solid read with believable characters.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 7, 2012
My kindle harboured this novel for several months before I finally and guiltily brought it up and read it! In my defence I have to say that I have - as do many people - lots of books on my kindle and can't seem to call a halt to the acquisitions.Annis Ward Jackson is an excellent author who produces interesting characters within the framework of a way out plot, accompanied by tight writing. Her character, Ellis Crawford, ex-marine and recovering from a re-constructed leg operation arrives in Battenburg to be the Police Chief. A little drunkedness, some light wife bashing, wayward kids and a few speeding motorists await him - so he thinks. Well, they do, but he also discovers, while scuffling through old files, evidence of a non-investigation of several unsolved murders. The information that the local hierarchy didn't want the previous sheriff to investigate these and the man had actually obeyed, stuns Ellis. Of course he goes ahead and investigates...The characters are solidly written and the hero is extremely likeable. When the murderer is discovered, Ms Ward Jackson makes sure that he too is damaged - but there it ends with no conclusion.Abruptly, the reader is pitched into the literary cold.I hope the next book in the series answers the question of what Ellis did about the perpetrator, with whom the reader will, no doubt, feel deep sympathy.Apart from the sudden ending - the meaning of which I may have not grasped - this is a great read and I enjoyed it sufficiently to buy another Ellis Crawford mystery.