Where the Shadows Fall: An Alice Rice Mystery by Gillian Galbraith
| Where the Shadows Fall: An Alice Rice Mystery by Gillian Galbraith | |
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| Category: Crime | |
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Reviewer: Loralei Haylock
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| Summary: A page turning adventure with a side of character development and romance that keep it from being a flat murder mystery. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 224 | Date: April 2009 |
| Publisher: Polygon | |
| ISBN: 978-1846971068 | |
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When the body of a retired sheriff is found in his grand house, Detective Alice Rice finds herself hunting his killer. The motive seems to be linked with a wind farm project that has been proposed for the area – a project that has met with heated resistance from many locals.
With a room full of potential suspects, threatening notes written to the sheriff in a distinctive hand, a secret lover who fails to come forward to the police, Alice and the rest of the CID team have a lot of mess to sift through before they can come anywhere near an arrest. But when their best guess suspect is mown down in a hit and run, things get a whole lot more complicated.
Meanwhile, Alice has family issues to deal with when her mother is taken ill, as well as the continued mental break down of her Alzheimer's suffering neighbour, and her growing attraction to Ian Melville, a suspect, since proven innocent, on Alice's last case.
Normally at the first instance of phonetically spelled accents, I want to cry and throw the offending book at a wall. I've always thought there was something kind of cheap about it, but in Where the Shadow Falls, it really works. You get the impression that Galbraith really loves Edinburgh, its people and its quirks, and the book is all the richer for it.
The danger when using such hotly debated and current issues, like wind farms, is sounding a little preachy. There is nothing worse than a preachy book, even if you agree with all the author is saying. Galbraith avoids this by not allowing an authorial tone to enter her writing. The characters make judgements, but she doesn't force the reader one way or the other.
A page turning adventure with a side of character development and romance that keep it from being a flat murder mystery. Recommended to borrow, though, unless you're an avid crime fan, as it's unlikely you'll read it more than once.
My thanks to the publisher for sending a copy.
Check out Bookbag's Top Ten Crime Novels for some great further reading! It's a different country but you might enjoy Three Drops of Blood and a Cloud of Cocaine by Quentin Mouron and W Donald Wilson (translator).
Gillian Galbraith's Alice Rice Mysteries in Chronological Order
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You can read more book reviews or buy Where the Shadows Fall: An Alice Rice Mystery by Gillian Galbraith at Amazon.com.
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