Stevie‘s review of Twisted by Laura K. Curtis
Contemporary Romantic Suspense published by Intermix 19 Nov 13
I love mystery stories with or without a central romance, and even those with no romantic elements, although generally I find I prefer cosies, thrillers and police procedurals to romantic suspense – not that I’m going to rely on Amazon’s categorisation to tell me what to read, since there’s plenty of overlap between the subgenres. So a story set in a small town with a police detective hero, and with a heroine who investigates crime from a different angle as part of her profession, ought to appeal, regardless of how Amazon shelves it, especially as it includes both a cold case and ongoing mysteries as parts of the plot. On the other hand, while I appreciate a good red herring, I dislike it when authors overly rely on bait-and-switch techniques to give us glimpses of the bad guys without revealing their identities in full or their exact role in the plot. I also prefer as many of the loose ends as possible to be neatly tied up by the end of the story – which can be tricky to achieve in books with multiple plot threads and a large cast of minor characters.
After finding her mother murdered, the teenage Laura Sadler ran away from her small town in Texas, taking her baby brother with her. The pair were rescued by a police detective and his wife, and Laura grew up to become a successful author of true crime books – using the surname of her adoptive parents – later becoming closely involved with several high-profile investigations, but never daring to investigate the death of her mother until her brother was old enough to take care of himself. Now, the pair of them have returned to the scene of the crime, moving into the house where the murder took place, and Laura in particular is keen to see her mother’s killer brought to justice.
Meanwhile, Laura’s old high school friend, TJ, the daughter of the mayor and sister of another up and coming local politician, is a police officer on the local force, serving under the new chief, Detective Ethan Donovan. Ethan’s an outsider, while most other officials are related to one of the three main families in town. I do find all this rather tricky to follow, being less familiar with the political structure than I imagine US readers would be and got a little mixed up with all the grouped surnames. But maybe that’s just me.
Laura is suspicious of everyone – even Ethan, although he’s very much attracted to her – but she does manage to warily renew her friendship with Tara. Working with the two of them, and using software developed by her ex-FBI friend, Jake, Laura is able to establish that in the years since her mother’s death, at least one, and probably two, serial killers have been operating in the area. Whether either of these crime clusters is related to her mother’s death is harder to establish and, given the hostility just about everyone in town has towards Laura, there’s no shortage of suspects for any of the crimes.
We learn early on who is responsible for some of the deaths, and we catch glimpses of another, even more sinister, killer. However, this second villain is referred to by a pseudonym the origins of which are never really explained. Maybe it makes sense to US readers, but I never quite managed to tie it in to the character whose identity is eventually revealed. Also, we never find out what happened about all the women who are missing – and we now presume are dead – as a result of the predations of the various bad guys. The final showdown with the ultimate bad guy is tense and dramatic, although I dislike the convention that serial killers are so often portrayed as insane – the cold, heartless, totally sane villains are far more chilling in my opinion – but then there are also all those loose ends bothering me that probably went unnoticed by readers exclusively focussed on the romance aspects.
Overall, a mostly well-plotted story that suffers slightly from too many plotlines and not enough space to resolve them all. I’d say that having so many unsolved crimes in so small an area is stretching the bounds of credibility a little thin, but then we’ve had a few serial killers like that over here in recent years, so maybe having more than one in what I assume is a relatively small area is plausible over the other side of the pond.
Grade: C
Read Veena’s review here.
Summary:
Lucy Sadler Caldwell is a successful true-crime writer. But the one story she’s never been able to come to terms with is the murder of her own mother–until now. She’s returned to Dobbs Hollow, Texas, the hometown she fled seventeen years ago, to finally expose the real killer.
After a bullet took out his knee in Houston, Detective Ethan Donovan found himself without a lot of options, which is how he ended up as Chief of Police in Dobbs Hollow. Lucy sure isn’t asking for his help–she’s not big on trust–but he can’t help feeling a strong desire to come to her aid.
And though Lucy is armed to the teeth, she will need all the help she can get. When she starts digging into the past, she unearths a psychotic killer who will stop at nothing to silence her forever…
Read an excerpt.
