2003 mystery. The small New York town of Miller's Kill is seeing
gay-bashing incidents which escalate until someone's killed. But how
does this tie to rumours of contamination at the site of a new holiday
resort?
Spencer-Fleming seems to have set out to be a bit less gritty,
and a bit more thrillery, this time round, and for my taste it rather
worked. No more "welfare queen" stereotyping, no more long
descriptions of what an amazing cook Fergusson is – instead she gets
to use her helicopter-flying skills from her Army days.
All right, it's perhaps not much of a mystery: suspect that something
might not be exactly as it has clearly been set up to seem, and the
alternative explanation clicks very neatly into place. This isn't a
tough classic-era puzzle story. But that's OK, because the series plot
is about how unhappily-married police chief Van Alstyne and
expected-to-be-extra-moral priest Fergusson will negotiate the basic
problem that they've fallen in love with each other and the small town
keeps throwing them together. (Here they harp a bit on the age
difference, but more interesting to me was that Van Alstyne's wife –
still almost entirely off-stage here – doesn't take an interest in his
police work, as a way of dealing with the stress of having a husband
who might be shot any day, while Fergusson has an amateur's enthusiasm
for investigation.)
It's all a bit spiky and uncomfortable, and I think that's deliberate.
Not a book for everyone, but definitely what I was in the mood for
after, alas, giving up on three books in a row.
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