WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW
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| “It’s been twenty years, Lieutenant. I’ve gone through it every day for twenty years. I’ll get through these days the same way I got through those, one bad day at a time.”- My Sister's Grave, Robert Dugoni |
When Sarah’s remains are finally discovered near their hometown in the northern Cascade mountains of Washington State, Tracy is determined to get the answers she’s been seeking. As she searches for the real killer, she unearths dark, long-kept secrets that will forever change her relationship to her past — and open the door to deadly danger.
I think you all know by now my favorite kind of thriller is the crime/police procedural. While I think there's something so fascinating about police work, I don't have any real desire to go into the detective field or CSI or any of that myself. I just like to read about them. I think the main reason why those kinds of books appeal to me more than the typical mystery-thriller is that they're more believable. I can't stand books where the main character has no background in crime investigation yet somehow she solves the entire mystery, while the bumbling police don't believe anything she says. In real life, those same MCs would probably FUBAR the investigation. All of this is because when I picked up this novel, I thought it would hit me right in my happy place.
Interestly, this book and I did not get off on the right foot. Tracy, our main character, started out okay and was very convincingly female to the point where I had to keep reminding myself that the author was, in fact, a man (for some reason, I find male authors write female protagonists much more convincingly than female authors write male protagonists. Maybe it's because they don't think as deeply into it as female writers seem to do), but as the book progressed she started to quickly annoy me. Her constant quest to free Edmund House confused me, because, why? Even if he didn't kill her sister, he's still a horrible, horrible human being who did other things to deserve that life sentence, like rape and torture a girl for three days, and it seemed to me like Tracy would have been the kind of person to be comfortable letting him rot in prison.
Though I just want to say that it's pretty cool to have a main character involved in shooting competitions and not treating owning a few guns or liking hunting as an automatic sign of someone being a murderer, as well as having a setting that's rural, but not portrayed as being a town full of backwoods inbred rednecks. I found the woodsy rural setting to be a refreshing take on conventions of the genre and this book to be a much more convincing take on the genre of rural noir than other books- unlike A Good Idea.
I also didn't like Dan O'Leary much at all. Oddly enough, he was another reason I had to keep reminding myself this book was written by a guy- he seemed for all the world like some dream love interest a girl would create. Educated, wealthy, hurt by his cheating ex wife, childhood best friend, the typical perfect love interest. traits. Not into that stuff, myself. Also, their relationship struck me as manipulative and even inappropriate, especially on Tracy's part. I couldn't shake the idea she was using him for his occupation, and he had only taken the case just because it would get her in his bed, not because it was a "gross miscarriage of justice". I think my least favorite part was during the trial, when he put her on the stand, and the fact they had just slept together the night before made me think the whole thing was just wildly inappropriate. Could just be me, though, and YMMV (wow, look at me using all these acronyms, damn I'm cool).
So I really did not like the first half of the book, including the trial. I think my absolute least favorite part in the world was the outcome of a trial, in which I was like "okay, we're supposed to root for a chick who put a convicted rapist and torturer back on the streets, and basically destroyed the careers of so many close friends of her father just to open up an investigation that might never get solved. Sounds logical.".
But then the second half of the book got really good all of a sudden and was the reason the book got as high a score it did. I find that I'm an ending person. I will, 9 times out of 10 (actually more like 7 times or 8 times) give a book a higher score if the second half is better than the first than I would give a book whose first half is better than its second half. Probably because that's the half that sticks with me the most.
I think the reason why the second half worked so well for me (well, besides the twistedness) is because Dugoni let both the main character and the protagonist be wrong. Do you know how revolutionary that concept is, especially in a mystery novel?!? Ah, my excitement over that turn of events caused me to use the dreaded interrobang, but if you don't grasp the amazingness of that you need to read more mystery novels. Not even a little bit wrong, but almost entirely wrong, too. That was another reason I gave it such a high rating for a book I almost entirely hated the first half.
I mean, sure, some parts in the second half didn't entirely work for me, since they reminded me wayyy too much of Silent Child and I'm still not sold on the character of Tracy Crosswhite, but eh, minor details. Dugoni also has a very effective writing style- it's not stellar or anything and certainly didn't blow me away, but he can get a scene down very nicely and knows how to translate his ideas onto a page effectively. Something I noticed about his writing is that his character development and interactions are very feminine, focusing heavily on the emotions, whereas when he writes to actually move the plot along it becomes more masculine, simplistic but, again, effective. This style works for me- being a girl, and one that enjoys characters and character studies makes his character descriptions and interactions pleasant to read whereas his writing with the intention of moving the plot forward doesn't skimp on the gore and the fun stuff to read about, not dwelling so much on the sentimental crap. Of course, there are some exceptions to this- he doesn't focus as much on physical appearance the way women authors tend to (often, I find that female authors unfortunately tend to hinge character traits on appearance- a habit I've been trying to break myself of in my own writing as well) and there are some descriptions of the torture that many male writers wouldn't hesitate to include but Dugoni holds back on- though I don't really begrudge him of that.
For more of my long winded musings on male vs female authors, you can go read my review of Sashenka, if you really want to. Maybe someday I'll write an entire blog post dedicated to this and spare my reviews the extra paragraph.
I mean, there were some parts in this book where I thought Dugoni played it a bit safe, but those didn't really bother me that much.
Overall, I may pick something else up by Dugoni, heck, maybe even the second book in the Tracy Crosswhite series because I think that's written more like a traditional crime novel than this book. Of course, being not entirely enthralled with our lovely Ms Crosswhite makes me think that maybe I might want to try something else. Of course, reading the Goodreads descriptions of the next books in the series might just change my mind... Who knows, maybe she'll grow on me!
Interestly, this book and I did not get off on the right foot. Tracy, our main character, started out okay and was very convincingly female to the point where I had to keep reminding myself that the author was, in fact, a man (for some reason, I find male authors write female protagonists much more convincingly than female authors write male protagonists. Maybe it's because they don't think as deeply into it as female writers seem to do), but as the book progressed she started to quickly annoy me. Her constant quest to free Edmund House confused me, because, why? Even if he didn't kill her sister, he's still a horrible, horrible human being who did other things to deserve that life sentence, like rape and torture a girl for three days, and it seemed to me like Tracy would have been the kind of person to be comfortable letting him rot in prison.
Though I just want to say that it's pretty cool to have a main character involved in shooting competitions and not treating owning a few guns or liking hunting as an automatic sign of someone being a murderer, as well as having a setting that's rural, but not portrayed as being a town full of backwoods inbred rednecks. I found the woodsy rural setting to be a refreshing take on conventions of the genre and this book to be a much more convincing take on the genre of rural noir than other books- unlike A Good Idea.
I also didn't like Dan O'Leary much at all. Oddly enough, he was another reason I had to keep reminding myself this book was written by a guy- he seemed for all the world like some dream love interest a girl would create. Educated, wealthy, hurt by his cheating ex wife, childhood best friend, the typical perfect love interest. traits. Not into that stuff, myself. Also, their relationship struck me as manipulative and even inappropriate, especially on Tracy's part. I couldn't shake the idea she was using him for his occupation, and he had only taken the case just because it would get her in his bed, not because it was a "gross miscarriage of justice". I think my least favorite part was during the trial, when he put her on the stand, and the fact they had just slept together the night before made me think the whole thing was just wildly inappropriate. Could just be me, though, and YMMV (wow, look at me using all these acronyms, damn I'm cool).
So I really did not like the first half of the book, including the trial. I think my absolute least favorite part in the world was the outcome of a trial, in which I was like "okay, we're supposed to root for a chick who put a convicted rapist and torturer back on the streets, and basically destroyed the careers of so many close friends of her father just to open up an investigation that might never get solved. Sounds logical.".
But then the second half of the book got really good all of a sudden and was the reason the book got as high a score it did. I find that I'm an ending person. I will, 9 times out of 10 (actually more like 7 times or 8 times) give a book a higher score if the second half is better than the first than I would give a book whose first half is better than its second half. Probably because that's the half that sticks with me the most.
I think the reason why the second half worked so well for me (well, besides the twistedness) is because Dugoni let both the main character and the protagonist be wrong. Do you know how revolutionary that concept is, especially in a mystery novel?!? Ah, my excitement over that turn of events caused me to use the dreaded interrobang, but if you don't grasp the amazingness of that you need to read more mystery novels. Not even a little bit wrong, but almost entirely wrong, too. That was another reason I gave it such a high rating for a book I almost entirely hated the first half.
I mean, sure, some parts in the second half didn't entirely work for me, since they reminded me wayyy too much of Silent Child and I'm still not sold on the character of Tracy Crosswhite, but eh, minor details. Dugoni also has a very effective writing style- it's not stellar or anything and certainly didn't blow me away, but he can get a scene down very nicely and knows how to translate his ideas onto a page effectively. Something I noticed about his writing is that his character development and interactions are very feminine, focusing heavily on the emotions, whereas when he writes to actually move the plot along it becomes more masculine, simplistic but, again, effective. This style works for me- being a girl, and one that enjoys characters and character studies makes his character descriptions and interactions pleasant to read whereas his writing with the intention of moving the plot forward doesn't skimp on the gore and the fun stuff to read about, not dwelling so much on the sentimental crap. Of course, there are some exceptions to this- he doesn't focus as much on physical appearance the way women authors tend to (often, I find that female authors unfortunately tend to hinge character traits on appearance- a habit I've been trying to break myself of in my own writing as well) and there are some descriptions of the torture that many male writers wouldn't hesitate to include but Dugoni holds back on- though I don't really begrudge him of that.
For more of my long winded musings on male vs female authors, you can go read my review of Sashenka, if you really want to. Maybe someday I'll write an entire blog post dedicated to this and spare my reviews the extra paragraph.
I mean, there were some parts in this book where I thought Dugoni played it a bit safe, but those didn't really bother me that much.
Overall, I may pick something else up by Dugoni, heck, maybe even the second book in the Tracy Crosswhite series because I think that's written more like a traditional crime novel than this book. Of course, being not entirely enthralled with our lovely Ms Crosswhite makes me think that maybe I might want to try something else. Of course, reading the Goodreads descriptions of the next books in the series might just change my mind... Who knows, maybe she'll grow on me!
8 out of 10
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