Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Book Review: The Greeks of Beaubien Street

Title: The Greeks of Beaubien Street 

Author: Suzanne Jenkins

Date: 2011

Quote: "Autopsies were Jill's least favorite part of being a homicide detective."

But that's what she is. This story is about a particularly harrowing time in Jill Zannos's life: While working on an especially obscene murder case, she asks members of her family why they've chosen to stay in the part of Detroit called Greektown, and their answers provide more of her own family history than she really wanted to know. Her half-brother in the special care home is not her father's son. Yikes. Is she even her father's daughter? 

This book is being marketed through a genre fiction marketing system as a murder mystery, but it's not written like one. A murder mystery is solved by identifying the pattern when an unknown murderer kills again, or when some other crime is committed that sheds light on th first one. In this story there are two murders, but they never connect. Jill uncovers enough evidence to make an open-and-shut case without having to rely on logic, intuition, or general knowledge to solve the mystery. Fans of Agatha Christie or Tony Hillerman will be disappointed. This is not so much a mystery as a novel about the personal journey of a woman who happens to be a homicide detective.  

If you like a novel in which introspection and emotional feelings are balanced with lots of violence, scandal, and just plain smut, The Greeks of Beaubien Street is for you--and there are sequels.

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