Genre: Police
Procedural
Description:
“When graduate student Cassandra Lyons is found stabbed behind the
wheel of her car in her condo's garage, Detectives Seagate and Miner suspect
her live-in boyfriend, Richard Harson. Only a week before, the police responded
to a domestic-disturbance call at their condo. The shouting match had something
to do with Richard's affair with his ex-girlfriend, as well as Cassandra's
ongoing relationship with Will Nyland, a distinguished professor. Cassandra and
Nyland had just returned from a professional conference, also attended by
another graduate student, Beth Park. When a video shot in a hotel room
surfaces, apparently showing Cassandra and Nyland raping Beth Park, the
detectives devise a new theory of the case: Beth Park exacted her revenge on
her fellow grad student. But when another woman is found dead and Beth Park
disappears, the detectives believe she is about to become the third victim.”
Author:
“Mike Markel writes the Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery series,
which is set in the fictional small city of Rawlings, Montana, home of Central
Montana State University. That university is somewhat like Boise State
University, where Mike taught writing, but in Rawlings the weather is colder,
the football team less successful, and the murder rate much, much higher.
Mike lives in Kirkland, WA.”
For more, like Mr Markel’s Facebook page.
Appraisal:
This brings the Detectives Seagate and Miner
Mystery series to 9 books. The first several books were great in two way.
First, they’re just good police procedurals. Plus, I have an easy time picturing
Rawlings, MT, the fictional college town where the series takes place as it is
much like the town I live in (smaller Western city dominated by a state university).
The second thing that drew me in was the relationship and contrast between the
two partners, Karen Seagate, the single, recovering alcoholic and Ryan Miner,
the younger, straight-arrow Mormon family man. As the series has gone on this
second draw has become “just the way it is” and isn’t as noticeable anymore.
But I’ve continued to be entertained. The stories have continued to get me
thinking about things. Those things have just been different.
In this case the
story should have you thinking about the #MeToo movement. About men with power
who take advantage of women and how institutions and other people have
protected them in the past and all too often continue to do so. I guess you
could say that the basics of this story were “ripped from the headlines,” but the
author has put his own spin on it, keeping it entertaining and intense, as all
good detective stories should be, as Seagate, Miner, and the reader try to
figure out what really happened.
FYI:
Some adult language.
Format/Typo
Issues:
No significant issues.
Rating: *****
Five Stars
Reviewed
by: BigAl
Approximate
word count: 75-80,000 words
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