This is my first Mary Willis Walker book and I'll look for more. While the story is not exactly as spine-tingly and chilling as the blurbs promise, she tells a good story that keeps you interested. Her protagonist (Katherine)is exceedingly easy to feel compassion for, and there are just enough clues in the mystery to allow a very clever person (for the record, I'm not one of them) to solve it.
The best thing is she builds up this big family-secret background story and really delivers on it. Too many times a writer will allude to one and my reaction is basically, "That's it? Who GAF?"
It's a little dated (over 20 years old now) and that rears up glaringly a couple times. Once the investigation gets delayed by lack of research/ info that we'd be able to google in seconds, and another time Kate has to wait for the one hour photo place to open the next day to wait (again) to get some proof developed. No $20 digital cameras back then!
So, not exactly a masterpiece, but a very satisfying story that doesn't disappoint.
Although a decent book after several years it doesn't stay with me. I reread my notes on the book and if it weren't for them I wouldn't have remembered reading this book at all. I do remember it took me weeks to finish it. I had a hard time connecting to the character Katherine and could care less who killed her father whom she hadn't seen in over 30 years. This is definitely not a cozy as the context was a bit more graphic then that. Katherine not only finds herself in the business of uncovering the reason behind her fathers death but also the death of several other men, an illegal rare animal selling ring, and a deep dark family secret. Overall I would say the book wasn't bad but I didn't rush out and read any other books by this author either.
