Publisher: Berkley
Published: February
18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0593097892
Genre: Suspense
Format: Print from
Publisher
TWO-1/2 HEARTS
After almost losing her job Shana Merchant has moved to the
remote town of Thousand Islands in upstate New York with her fiancé,
Carson. There, despite Carson’s advice
and wishes, she joins the local police department. In the sleepy town the most Shana can expect
is a few parking tickets or the occasional bar fight…at least that is what she
is told. But one morning she, and her
partner, Tim receive a call reporting a missing person on the private island of
Tern. With a nor-easterner bearing down on the area, Shana and Tim head out to
Tern. When they arrive they find the
Sinclair family. Wealthy, long time
owners of the island and a famed fabric company in New York’s garment district. They also find that the missing person may be
a murder victim. With only the family and
its long time caretaker on the island Shana and Tim are in a race against time
to find the killer.
The blurb for Tessa Wegert’s DEATH IN THE FAMILY sounded so
good. I’m a huge fan of locked room
mysteries be it in a room like Agatha Christie or an island like Anne Cleeves. I couldn’t wait to see how Wegert handled
it. She handled the “locked room” aspect
fine for the most part. The rest, not so
much.
There are two other threads through the story that were
disappointing. Wegert had a great
opportunity to have told three separate, well done stories instead of
intermingle the three, two of them weak.
From the beginning of the book I felt like I’d been dropped in the
middle of the story. I looked to see if
there was a prequel to see what happened between Shana and Bram – there wasn’t. We don’t learn what happened until 2/3 into
the story and then it isn’t even really all that clear. Shana tells us how what he did caused her to
doubt herself, sort of, but we aren’t really all that clear on the
details. By the end of the book I wasn’t
all that sure if he’d been caught or not.
The other weak thread was Cameron, the fiancé. I admit, given his personality and what we
learn about him he might have been the killer but generally, aside from his
special way of undermining Shana I’m not sure why he was in the story. She could have moved to Thousand Islands for
any other reasons side from her engagement to him. Her situation with Carson could have been an
entirely separate story with him as a true perpetrator. If his and Bram’s sections were there to
boost word count, then tell a longer story like what Karen Rose does – she tells
a complete story where you know where you are from the beginning and not
wondering if you missed a prequel.
The ending was a little hard to figure out because Wegert uses
that horrible first person present tense that, as I’ve said before, reads like
a non-English speaking second grader writing a paper for school while trying to
learn the language. That technique ruins
an otherwise decent read. In this case,
as long as I stuck to the closed room aspect, it was a decent read. If that part of the book hadn’t been a good
read I would have rated this book a 1-1/2 or a 2. I don’t see myself continuing with the
series.
This is an objective review and not an endorsement of
this book.
<iframe style="width:120px;height:240px;"
marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no"
frameborder="0"
src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ss&ref=as_ss_li_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=regatayl-20&language=en_US&marketplace=amazon®ion=US&placement=0593097890&asins=0593097890&linkId=3ab372baa8ed8b8f5ee071da17bc2983&show_border=true&link_opens_in_new_window=true"></iframe>
No comments:
Post a Comment