Review: 4 and a Half Stars (No Spoilers)
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 29, 2010
Please forgive me, as I finished this book about 2 weeks ago & hadn't gotten around to writing the review yet, so I may be light on the synopsis. I've forgotten some first names & all the surnames, sorry! I'm lucky I remember mine :DThis book grabbed me and twisted me into a pretzel shape & then held me there, upside down, until the unexpected ending!The story starts with Craig waking up with amnesia. He's covered in blood in his blood-soaked bedroom & wife Kirstie (sp?) is nowhere to be found. Instead of doing the sane thing, he tries to clean up the evidence, afraid that he did it. He's charged with murder, but two hung-juries later, he's free, if not exonerated, mainly because no body was ever found. The million-dollar life insurance policy is still unpaid & many consider it to be his motive for murder. But did he do it or not? Yes! No! I'm not telling! :DFast-forward a decade & he's recently married to his wife's sister, Narelle, with whom he'd had an affair (that he says ended long before the wife vanished). They live a life of quiet desperation, trying to hide from the world. But Jacinta, a freelance reporter, stumbles upon the story while researching missing persons and all heck breaks loose.Her boyfriend, Brett, works with Narelle and Jacinta convinces him to invite them to dinner to pump them for information for a story. Jacinta has a bout of conscience at the dinner, but not before she wakes a sleeping tiger, Kirstie's best friend, who also happends to be a bit off her rocker. The bff (as I'll call her) has a fit when she finds out they're married and starts harrassing Craig and Narelle, among other things.The police get involved again when bones are found in a National Forest & a cross is found nearby that may be Kirstie's. They have to wait for DNA reports (this is more real-to-life than most books, since DNA reports do take a long time) and in the meantime, more bodies start appearing and they're being linked to Craig!The detective on the case, (Dan??) turns out to have a history with Jacinta, but she hadn't seen him for many years. There's an interesting subplot that revolves around the two of them.All the twists and turns kept me guessing and they continue pretty much non-stop to the end. I had about 6 candidates for the murders, about the only people I didnt suspect were Jacinta, the cop and the victim, lol.I've read the other reviews & I'm a bit confounded. It's hard to keep my attention, yet I had no trouble concentrating on this book at all. I like all types of mysteries, thrillers, suspense novels, with maybe the exception of cozies, hard-boiled being my favorite, but the book wasn't advertised as such, so I didn't have expectations.This book had all the elements of an excellent mystery & I didn't find it too romantic (don't like romances).  I happen to like to keep guessing and being subjected to a lot of plot twists. There were more than enough of them to satisfy, yet I had no problem keeping up with the story & my memory is going (obviously, lol). I didn't notice any lulls in the action at all. I finished the book in about a day and a half, which is about typical for me for a book this length (around 6k locations?).The ending was excellent and definitely caught me unawares. I didn't guess it (I hate that!), so Thin Blood gets a passing grade for unpredictability.I honestly don't know which book the detractors were reading. A star or two difference is really a subjective thing, but in *my* opinion, it earned the 4.5 I've given it. I took off half a star because the author used too many instances of Australian slang that I couldn't decipher. Most of it I could get from the context, but I think I need a dictionary from Oz before her next book, which I do plan to read.I bought the book because I saw it on the Amazon Top 100 Kindle book list, money well-spent. I have no acquaintance with the author.