Negative Image (Constable Molly Smith Novels)
A murder turns personal for Sergeant John Winters, Constable Molly Smith’s boss on the Trafalgar, British Columbia, police force. It turns out that the victim, a has-been fashion photographer, has a decades-old connection to Winters’ wife, Eliza, a former model. Winters, his trust in his wife shaken, is taken off the case as Eliza becomes a suspect, ahead of both the victim’s young and scarcely grief-striken widow and his ambitious assistant. Working with Winters on a series of home burglaries, Smith suffers the tensions of being a woman in a man’s world; meanwhile, she deals with her father’s health problems, her love for Mounty Adam Tocek, and the presence of a stalker, parolee Charlie Bassing, who blames Smith for all his problems. An unusual protagonist for a crime series, Molly Smith is rarely the primary character when it comes to breaking cases (at least not through four outings), but her life outside work is given full sway. And yet, it is Molly who elevates this series from standard procedural fare into something quite memorable. --Michele Leber--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.