Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: March 1, 2022 (e-book)
Source: ARC E-copy via Suzy Approved Book Tours
Summary:
Senior Investigator Shana Merchant must dredge up dark secrets and old grudges if she’s to solve the murder of a prominent local citizen in the Thousand Islands community she now calls home.
The body is discovered on Wolfe Island, under the shadow of an enormous wind turbine. Senior Investigator Shana Merchant, arriving on the scene with fellow investigator Tim Wellington, can’t shake the feeling that she knows the victim – and the subsequent identification sends shockwaves through their community in the Thousand Islands of Upstate New York.
Politics, power, passion . . . there are dark undercurrents in Shana’s new home, and finding the killer means dredging up her new friends and neighbors’ old grudges and long-kept secrets.
That is, if the killer is from the community at all. For Shana’s keeping a terrible secret of her own: eighteen months ago she escaped from serial killer Bram Blake’s clutches. But has he followed her . . . to kill again?
My thoughts:
This is the third book in Tessa Wegert’s Shana Merchant series and I cannot tell you how much I love this series. It really is the perfect combination of police-procedural and psychological thriller, with a locked-room mystery thrown in…and I just love it!
This latest installment is full of twists and misdirection and really kept me guessing the entire time. As much as this book could be read as a stand-alone in the fact that has a self-contained case for Shana and her colleagues to solve, it also deals with a continuing thread that started in the first book and has been building ever since. This thread weaves itself into the current case and while the author does give a bit of backstory for those who haven’t read the previous books, you will have such a richer reading experience if you have. But maybe if this is the first one you are picking up, it will leave you eager to go back to the beginning.
I loved the character development we get here, not only for Shana but also on Bram. I feel like we learn quite a bit more about him and this makes for a much more thrilling, chilling and downright eerie read. I already didn’t like the guy and learning more about him just makes my feelings that much stronger towards him.
I think what I love best about this series is the small-town feel and how claustrophobic and atmospheric it can be. As Shana is focused on trying to solve the local murder, she is also trying to get to Bram before anyone else suffers. What ensues is quite the cat-and-mouse game until things come to quite a surprising end.
I went into this book thinking it was the last one of the series and when I got to the end, I felt like it had been wrapped up quite well, but then I found out there was another book coming, which pleases me immensely. I am excited and quite intrigued as to where things go next for Shana…and will definitely be eager to get my hands on that next book! If you haven’t picked this series up yet, I highly recommend it.
Books in this series:
- Death in the Family
- The Dead Season
- Dead Wind
