Review: A Quick, Unsatisfying Mystery
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 24, 2014
Detective Preston Andrews and his partner Trace Evans have just been called to the scene of an early morning murder. Andrews recognizes the victim as a friend of his younger sister and begins on the mission to find her killer. The trail soon leads them into an even bigger case involving multiple kidnappings of young women which is already being worked by the FBI. Special Agents Rachel Wilding and Bob Forrester from the agency's DC office join the investigation.For those who like to puzzle out clues along with the detectives, this book is short on details to help the reader along to connect the dots. In fact, many conclusions seem to have been jumped by the investigators, especially from the FBI, without giving the reader any background on how these suspicions were justified. How were the various disappearances of young women across the country related? How was it determined that they were all part of the same plot? None of this is explained even in passing, only that the information withheld because of "security" even from the local police as well as the reader. Too many plot holes go unfilled, making the results of the mystery unsatisfying to the reader who wants more. Even the time and place of the murder does not make sense when it is revealed who was responsible for the crime and why.The first part of the book sets up the fairly new partnership of the experienced Det. Andrews and young Trace Evans, and they begin to work the case together, but somewhere along the way Trace disappears entirely and is not included in the later investigative events or arrests. The same fate occurs to one of the two FBI investigators, Forrester; he comes to town a second time, then he isn't part of the action. Add to that the unrealistic and unprofessional behavior of the other agent, and you've got a mystery that is quickly turning into a romantic romp.There are also holes in the research done by the author. The geography and place names in Virginia Beach and Norfolk are often inaccurate. Other things such as the references to DAs and ADAs are also incorrect. Virginia does not have district attorneys, it has Commonwealth's Attorneys instead. FBI agents working in DC would be aware of this fact, especially one who went to law school in Virginia. The local police, of course, would also know better.The book started off as promising a new, interesting pair of detectives to launch a series of engaging mysteries, but ended up with an uneven, poorly plotted story instead.Not recommended.