Helpful Score: 5
The title suggests a dark nature, however, the story has humor and likable characters, along with a serious mystery. It was nominated for the Edgar Aware for Best First Novel, and rightly so. Highly recommended.
I wasn't all that excited about the somewhat cartoony resolution of the mystery in this book, but I still thought it was an excellent read. The author does a great job creating a few very likeable characters. She manages to make a waspy debutante relatable and sympathetic to a degree that I would not have thought possible. I've already added the second book with this character to my WL.
Helpful Score: 2
excellent writing from a new author. I can actually call it fresh, as her sstyle is all her own and i love it. old money meets with an excellent whodunit tha left me guessin to the end.
Helpful Score: 2
Interesting characters pull you into the book. Enjoyed look into the life of "Old Money" families. Knew pretty much how it was gonna turn out, but enjoyed the the journey with quirky twists & turns. Great effort for first novel. Well deserving of nomination for "EDGAR" award.
Cheryl R. (Spuddie) -
Helpful Score: 1
#1 Madeline Dare mystery set in 1980's Syracuse, NY. Madeline is a reporter--well, she writes mostly filler pieces for the local newspaper in Syracuse, NY where she moved with her husband Dean who is an engineer, a designer, mostly roughing it working on railroads while on the side working on a device that will save a lot of time and money.
Madeline comes from old money, as in Mayflower old money--but her parents fell out of the money loop--her mother having divorced and remarried several times and her father a paranoid aging hippie living in a trailer in California. Madeline longs to be part of that inner circle again, but she's not a whiner--she just does what she has to do to get by, including living in butt-ugly Syracuse in a dismal apartment.
Then one day Dean's uncle--his family are farmers in the area near Syracuse--brings up an old unsolved mystery in which two girls who were never identified were brutally murdered, their bodies posed--and hands Madeline a set of dog tags that just happen to belong to her cousin Lapthorne--one of the moneyed set. They were found by a local farmer not far from where the girls were found but never reported to the police--and Madeline is instantly intrigued and sets out to clear her cousin's name--even though she hasn't seen him in more than ten years, he's always been one of the good guys in her eyes and she doesn't want to go to the police yet.
Her searches lead her down some dark and scary paths, with suspects suddenly falling out of the trees, and when it's obvious the killer realizes she's investigating, she begins to fear for her own safety--but is her fear misplaced? Someone close to her is leaking information, but who?
Great read! I am not a big fan of frou-frou books about people with money, but I really like Madeline, and this story was a doozie! The author also is a very dynamic writer, with certain phrases and descriptions that leap out at you and give such a sense of place and...I don't know...feeling, I guess.
This is definitely not a cozy, with lots of graphic violence and descriptions, and probably not the best choice for a "bedtime" read, but a great read just the same, especially if you like a darker type of mystery.
Madeline comes from old money, as in Mayflower old money--but her parents fell out of the money loop--her mother having divorced and remarried several times and her father a paranoid aging hippie living in a trailer in California. Madeline longs to be part of that inner circle again, but she's not a whiner--she just does what she has to do to get by, including living in butt-ugly Syracuse in a dismal apartment.
Then one day Dean's uncle--his family are farmers in the area near Syracuse--brings up an old unsolved mystery in which two girls who were never identified were brutally murdered, their bodies posed--and hands Madeline a set of dog tags that just happen to belong to her cousin Lapthorne--one of the moneyed set. They were found by a local farmer not far from where the girls were found but never reported to the police--and Madeline is instantly intrigued and sets out to clear her cousin's name--even though she hasn't seen him in more than ten years, he's always been one of the good guys in her eyes and she doesn't want to go to the police yet.
Her searches lead her down some dark and scary paths, with suspects suddenly falling out of the trees, and when it's obvious the killer realizes she's investigating, she begins to fear for her own safety--but is her fear misplaced? Someone close to her is leaking information, but who?
Great read! I am not a big fan of frou-frou books about people with money, but I really like Madeline, and this story was a doozie! The author also is a very dynamic writer, with certain phrases and descriptions that leap out at you and give such a sense of place and...I don't know...feeling, I guess.
This is definitely not a cozy, with lots of graphic violence and descriptions, and probably not the best choice for a "bedtime" read, but a great read just the same, especially if you like a darker type of mystery.
