Author: Audrey Walker
Date: 2022
Quote: "Sarah had no idea when she found the body of the woman that her most cherished vacation in the mountains had come to an abrupt end."
Who the woman is, and what she has to do with Sarah, may be revealed in a later volume. The murder is somehow connected to a secret Sarah's murdered parents never disclosed to her. As if finding the victim's body in the front yard of her vacation cabin weren't a sufficiently horrible reminder of her loss, a little later Sarah's aunt's body will be dumped in the yard, too. A clue has been planted in the text (unfortunately not the one I was hoping for). Readers may guess whom Sarah, a police detective, will arrest first, but the mystery will not otherwise be solved at the end of the book.
What was the clue I was hoping for? The victims were poisoned with the same chemical. I'm not expert enough to have any idea what that chemical would be, but when the story mentioned, twice, that the kitchen at the little-used cabin was full of roaches I was hoping Walker would dare to mention some kind of insecticide spray. Household chemicals, even the ones "generally regarded as safe when used as directed" like bleach and lye, can be and have been used in murders. But that's not the direction in which the plot unfolds.
I've liked other mysteries by this author but it seemed to me that this one was hastily written, possibly even with some help from a computer program--that wasn't so easy to do in 2022, but, as evidence: that clunky sentence above. Online publishers have determined that the formula that sells the most books has been when a professional writer puts several manuscripts or out-of-print books online in quick succession, and sold beginning writers the idea that the key to sales is for them, too, to put a dozen or more books online in six months. It doesn't work well for them--partly because, as beginners, they don't have that many manuscripts already written and aren't giving themselves enough time to write good ones, and partly because, as writers, most of them aren't going to be the ones readers collect. People who read one Sherlock Holmes, or Peter Wimsey, or Miss Marple mystery want to collect them all. People who read most of the COVID-driven stories posted on these book marketing sites, generally, do not.
Audrey Walker can write better than this, has written better than this, and should be expected to write better than this.
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