When an opportunity arises to return to Major Crimes, he jumps at it. He is soon involved in a troubling case. A woman’s life is in peril, and a child has vanished. It’s challenges like these he came back for, but then a man dies, and the pressure builds.
Barton finds himself embroiled in an investigation like no other. Most murders boil down to money or sex, but in the sleepy village of Castor, it seems the motivation is obsession, and there’s nothing more deadly than that.
While I enjoyed this book quite a bit, there was just
something missing that I can't quite put my finger on.
On the surface, it had all of the usual earmarks not only of a
good story, but of a story by this author. There was an interesting plot that
consisted of several seemingly unconnected storylines, some shady characters
that had you consistently questioning their potential roles in what was going
on, while also containing the usual balance between Barton the tireless leader,
and Barton the husband and father.
Maybe the problem for me was that they were a little too
interconnected. I mean you have Poppy, the “missing fourteen-year-old” whose
mother just happens to be friends with the woman who was almost run down and
whose uncle is suspected in a different case. And sure, I get these things
sometimes happen, but it was just a little too neat for me. Especially when you
take into consideration the way that Poppy dressed and acted. Yes, I am aware
of the fact that it is an actual condition (I did read the author’s notes at
the end), but she didn’t seem crucial to the plot at all, and in fact it was
more than a little disturbing to find out just what she had been up to (and a
little unfathomable that she was able to use someone else’s photo
identification as her own).
I also felt as though there were some chapters that could have
been removed altogether, and it would not have changed the plot at all. To
bring Poppy back into it, what was the purpose of Barton running into her
outside of a grocery store after the investigations had been wrapped? She was
still the same belligerent child that she had been, and it was obvious that she
had learned nothing from what had happened. In my opinion, it simply wasn’t
needed.
There were also a couple of instances where it would seem the
author forgot details moments after they happened. In one case, there was a
whole conversation between Robert and Barton as they drove to the police
station, but as soon as their interview there wraps up, the author says that
Robert had taken a taxi to the station as he wasn’t sure of the parking situation.
This threw me to the point I had to go back and make sure the scene with them
talking had in fact taken place.
I will say, I enjoyed some of the witty comments that were
thrown into this one, such as Barton’s wife telling him that he would be fine
to accept the position as the eldest had moved out, their youngest was in
school and their teenaged daughter would be “circling the roof on her
broomstick for the next few years.” As a mom who has raised teenaged daughters,
I could not think of a more fitting description.
All things considered, while this wasn’t my favorite book in the series, it still holds up well on its own, and I will continue to read more from this author in the future.
 by Ross Greenwood){kind=link}
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