Author: Dianne Emley
Publisher: Random House
Rating: WORTHY!
Erratum:
There wasno..." - space missing, should be "There was no..." (p10 Adobe Digital Editions version).
There were a couple of other errors of this nature, but otherwise the writing was pretty well done.
This is your standard murder detective story with all the associated tropes and clichés. That doesn't mean it can't be an engrossing story, just that it was too early to tell in chapter one. I had some issues with it as detailed below, and in the final analysis I can't recommend it. I quit reading twenty pages from the end as soon as the supposedly ruthless villain began monologuing and we had a précis of the entire novel. Not only was it boring, it was the last straw in what had been a very borderline novel even to that point!
The vics, a teacher and a teenage boy were found by Emily Vining, daughter of detective Nan Vining, in a park. So already we have a family involvement and a conflict between daughter and mom since Emily is at the park after dark with a boy she knows her mother will not like. We're pretty much telegraphed that there's a conspiracy going on here, up the highest levels, as the saying goes.
One thing that immediately bothered me is that the female vic is described as pretty and young - as though the murder wouldn't have been so bad had she been old and/or 'ugly'. We're told that she's young twice in almost as many lines, but when the guy is described, we don't get pretty for him, or 'studly', or handsome, or beautiful, or good-looking. He's just a guy, so obviously we need to go deeper than mere skin for him than we do for a female, where a simple definition by age and skin-deep appearance is apparently quite sufficient to categorize her.
I don't get this obsession with describing all women as pretty or beautiful in novels (except for where the plot calls for them to be old or repellent in some way, of course). Why do writers do this in such a disturbingly knee-jerk manner? Why do they - and I'm concerned about female writers especially here - feel this evidently overwhelming need to make even victims of a murder pretty rather than just regular everyday people? I'd rather read about real people in my fiction, not caricatures or fantasies, or popular habits. But that's just me.
"Police Detective" Nan is advised that she will probably want to drive Emily home, because no teen girl can possibly drive herself home after this, no matter who she is. She's only a weak woman after all (and pretty, too!), a girl of at least sixteen who Nan nevertheless infantilizes by calling her "sweet pea" which could with a slight change of spelling just as ably describe the constitution of her urine as it can a wilting flower. No wonder she can't drive herself home. She's been disabled since birth by her own mom. We see this friction in stark profile later.
Another thing which was really confusing was the hierarchical relationship within the Pasadena police department. We learn that Sergeant Early (and she is consistently described as a sergeant, never as a detective sergeant) is Nan's "commanding officer" but a sergeant really isn't a commanding officer. She may be Nan's superior officer, but only if she's a detective sergeant and Nan a lower-ranked detective. The problem is that we're also told that Nan is the senior officer in Homicide, so there's a lot of confusion as to what this means.
Senior could mean that she's the highest ranked officer, or merely that she's been there longest, but that latter option begs the question as to why her rank isn't higher. We're not initially told her rank, but later, a superior officer refers to her as 'corporal'. I have personally never heard of this actually being a rank in the police (as far as I can recall), although I understand it's considered one in some unformed branches. It's not a detective thing as far as I'm aware. But that's only as far as I'm aware.
I skipped chapter fifteen because it brought a huge screeching halt to the story just as I was actually beginning to become somewhat interested in it. Another thing which bothered me came right after this when they had a memorial service for the vics, which took place breathlessly close to the discovery of the bodies, but the problem was that some known gang members and prison parolees were in the crowd. Instead of being asked to leave, they were allowed to stay. I didn't get that at all. It was in no way appropriate for them to be there.
One problem with Detective Nan Vining is that she seems to be incompetent. Despite being told that the teen victim, Jared, was researching his father's death, not believing that it was a suicide, she fails to take the boy's laptop, which is the obvious repository for any research he might have been doing, and then the laptop is stolen. She fails to pursue any laptop or other device for the female Victim Erika, and later those things are evidently not in evidence as well! This didn't imbue me with any faith at all in her ability, and this faith further retreated into inaccessibility the more I read of her actions.
Just before the half-way point in the novel, Nan calls a guy who is in DC, and who is obviously more than just a friend, but the assumption here is that every reader knows who this is. Since I have read no other books in this series, I had no idea who he was or what he really represented to Nan, but there was nothing in the text here to offer even a modicum of guidance. This was came completely out of the blue, especially since he hadn't been mentioned at all, not even in passing, up to this point. That struck me as odd.
I managed to stay with this story almost to the end, but as I said, it wasn't credible, there were what seemed to me to be pointless digressions from the investigation which served only to irritate me, and I didn't find the story overall to be credible. I didn't like the main chracter and had no desire whatsoever to read more about her. Your investigation may yield different results!
