The Balmoral Incident

Alanna Knight’s The Balmoral Incident gives insight into a royal getaway with the royal physician and his sister, Rose McQuinn. While traveling with the King gives Rose luxuries she’s not accustomed to, it also leads to several unexpected deaths which Rose cannot help but investigate. With a side detour into the feminist movement of 1905 Scotland, that was mostly a ploy to continue to storyline.

While I enjoyed reading this book, the ending was left hanging for me. It’s probably what would have happened in real life, but this is fiction and someone should have been punished.

Read March 2017.

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Whispers in the Mist

Lisa Alber writes about a quaint little village on the Irish coast that has an annual Matchmaker festival where the town is inundated with romantics looking for love and so many others taking advantage of the festive occasion. When the grey skies start rolling in, the myth of Grey Man starts scaring the children and when a stranger shows up dead, it begins to scare the adults as well. Whispers in the Mist was a great read with so many unique characters who all have history with one another, as happens in small towns.

The clues left along the way seem to cloud the story even more, but the ending was suspenseful and unexpected.

Enjoyable read. March 2017.

Among the Wicked

In Among the Wicked, Chief of Police Kate Burkholder needs to infiltrate a strict Amish community in upstate New York. Having been raised Amish, Burkholder knows how to befriend and investigate members of this exclusive group after a young girl dies mysteriously.

Linda Castillo weaves an incredible story in Among the Wicked. Her characters have to simultaneously live in multiple worlds and portray very different traits depending on whom they are talking with. Kate Burkholder is just one of many people living in different worlds and its up to her to find out about the secrets everyone is hiding.

This was a great glimpse of Amish life mixed with some cult-like traits of their leader. Great conclusion to this novel with unexpected twists.

Read February 2017

Code Grey

Clea Simon’s Code Grey started odd and didn’t get any better. Dulcie Swartz is a grad student trying to work on her thesis over spring break while the campus is empty. Unfortunately the school’s renovation and the death of a former student of the university has her trying to figure out a decades old case of missing books. In the process, Dulcie talks to her cat, and it responds, and she sees signs and visions from her dead cat. This was a bit too eccentric for my mystery loving habit and I was turned off by it. Also, when Dulcie’s boyfriend, who went home for the week, scolds her for walking around by herself at night, the feminist in me was triggered and I questioned every interaction afterward, never veering from my anti-boyfriend stance.

I thought Code Grey would be a different type of mystery. It was, but not in a way I enjoyed.

Read February 2017