WHERE THERE'S SMOKE (Coldren County #2)
RACHEL LOUISE ADAMS
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now
Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: Following the USA Today bestselling series debut, No Rest for the Wicked, Rachel Louise Adams returns with Where There’s Smoke.
A lot has happened in Dolores Hawthorne’s life since the events of last Halloween. She’s divorced, traded being a forensic pathologist for a job as a medical examiner, and now lives in small-town Wisconsin, close—but not too close—to her family.
Dolores doesn’t have much in the way of work, but that all changes when a body is found at the local slaughterhouse. Benedict Marcy owned Marcy’s Meats, and is affectionately called Mr. Mercy across the region. This high-profile case quickly catches the attention of Dolores’s friends at the FBI.
From the very beginning, this case is full of contradictions and surprises, and the team quickly learns someone is willing to go to extreme lengths to stop them from finding out the truth behind Benedict Marcy’s murder.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: In common with her debut mystery, No Rest for the Wicked, which I mildly enjoyed and reviewed in January, this sequel is a pleasant reward for saying "yes" to the publicist in spite of thinking "...mmmaaayyybe." I wasn't excited by the small-Midwest-town-return aspect or the obsessed-by-Halloween town bit, but the story was compelling: where's my dad the US Senator, who took him and why,and after the childhood he gave me do I even care?
Now she's moved back to Circe, Wisconsin, to be the medical examiner and work on those pesky sibling relationships she was denied, the intense emotional damage her abandoned forensic science career at the heights she'd reached, and the husband...well, let's draw a veil over that.
New beginnings in old familiar places. And this murder? What a way to (re)start her law-enforcement career. We're not in cozy anymore...the victim owned a meat-packing business, where he was discovered in his slaughterhouse, and we are off to the procedural races. I was not so sure I'd last as we get a Moby-Dick level of detail very quickly in the said slaughterhouse. No one could possibly enjoy working in a slaughterhouse. Or being in one on...other business. Or even knowing what goes on in one. Or anything in it being made public.
Or, it turns out for Mr. Marcy the dead guy, being involved with the local PTB. Like anyone else whose murder garners law-enforcement attention, the life of the victim and all the lives of those around him are opened up to intense scrutiny by the most motivated nosy people on the planet. It is astonishing how many ugly secrets there are under the rug with barely a lump to give their existence away. A bit less troubling meanness and the rug would never've been moved to expose you, Mr. Marcy....
The story runs in parallel tracks because while all the investigation by Dolores' scoobygroup of Kate (a newbie in the FBI, welcome to the team hope you're a veggie or you will be soon) and Paul, whom we have met before is going on there's also Dolores' processing of her revelations from the first book. That's gonna hurt a long, long time.
Here, then, is the root of the series-appeal of this story: we-the-reader are involved in the larger life of Dolores, the colleague/friends she's lucky enough to have found, as well as in the puzzles she's required to solve as a result of the avoidant career she chose under the stress of her unprocessed trauma. It is the same for series mysteries across all modern time. If series X doesn't appeal it's the world-building that you're not resonating with. Keep shopping, someone's doing exactly, or almost exactly, what you want to read.
I've got this series in my "almost exactly" pile now. Excellent work, Author Adams, and thank you.
