and now, another first in series, The Merchant's House, by Kate Ellis.
The Merchant’s House is the first installment in a mystery series by Kate Ellis. The action takes place in the town of Tradmouth, Devon, and the main character is DS Wesley Peterson. In the first novel, Wesley and his team have to solve the case of a missing two year old boy who was out in his fenced yard and disappeared. To add to their burden, the police are also called in to investigate the brutal murder of a young woman. And not only is Wesley tied up with these two difficult cases, but his wife is having some personal issues that are making his life a bit miserable.
Parallel to all of this action, Wesley is also friends with Neil Watson, an archaeologist who is excavating a house that used to belong to a merchant from the 17th century. Neil and his group discover the skeletons of a woman and a newborn. The story of that particular mystery is told in little snippets at the beginning of each chapter, and at some point, the past begins to mirror the present. It seems that little has changed over the past 400 years.
This is a series opener which hits the ground running, and is a pretty decent starter. I didn't feel that the author fleshed out her main character (Wesley) enough so that the reader really got to know him here, but (and this is why I enjoy reading series books in order) I expect that as the series progresses so will her characters. The mystery is a good one, the suspects are plentiful, and I liked the parallel lines of the past and present stories. This is definitely a series with which I will continue. This book I would cross between a police procedural and a cozy -- while not really in the cutesy realm of cozy, it's not as tough or gritty on the police end as what I would normally consider a procedural.
Overall -- a good beginning and on with the show with The Armada Boy.
0 comments:
Post a Comment