Genre:
Mystery/Police Procedural
Description:
“Seagate and Miner investigate the murder of Maricel Salizar, a young
Filipino exchange student at Central Montana State. The most obvious suspect is
the boyfriend, who happens to have gang connections. And then there’s Amber, a
fellow student who’s obviously incensed at Maricel for a sexual indiscretion
involving Amber’s boyfriend. But the evidence keeps leading Seagate and Miner
back to the professor, an LDS bishop who hosted her in his dysfunctional home.
Seagate takes it in stride that the professor can’t seem to tell the truth
about his relationship with the victim, but her devout partner, Ryan Miner,
believes that a high-ranking fellow Mormon who violates a sacred trust deserves
special punishment.”
Author:
Mike Markel teaches writing at Boise State University. In addition to
the Seagate and Miner Mystery series (this is the fourth in that series) he has
written eight non-fiction books on writing and numerous articles for various
publications.
For more, visit the author’s website.
Appraisal:
I’d previously read Three-Way,
another of the books in the Seagate and Miner mystery series. One of the things
that appealed to me was the relationship between the two detectives, with Karen
Seagate as the crude-talking, cynical, recovering alcoholic and Ryan Miner as
the devout Mormon family man who describes himself as “a bit of a boy scout.”
They’re just about polar opposites, despite this, they have mutual respect, yet
the dynamic between the two and their different styles, as ripe as it is for a
lot of tense moments, rarely works out that way. Instead they tend to
complement each other, with their differences and contrasting points of view
making the partnership stronger.
In this installment, Ryan’s religion comes into
play, at points blinding him to possible scenarios and later, when he’s not
able to ignore new information they’ve uncovered, causing him to focus too much
on a single suspect, to his detriment.
There’s a lesson to be learned about how our preconceptions can
influence our approach to problems in a bad way. Another excellent read from
Markel that keeps you guessing whodunit the whole way.
FYI:
Some adult language.
Added for
Reprise Review: The Broken Saint was a
nominee in the Mystery category for B&P 2015 Readers' Choice Awards.
Original review ran November 1, 2014
Format/Typo
Issues:
No significant issues
Rating:
***** Five Stars
Reviewed
by: BigAl
Approximate
word count: 80-85,000 words
No comments:
Post a Comment