Thrill and Murder ( )

I came across 'My Sister's Grave' as I was excavating the depths of my TBR pile. I bought it back in 2015, about a year after its release as an audiobook, when it was being promoted as a debut novel from a promising new author kicking off a new series. Then I lost sight of it. I found it again because I saw good reviews of 'One Last Kill' (2023), the tenth and latest book in the series.

As soon as I started to read 'My Sister's Grave', I was slapping my forehead and asking "How have I let this sit on my shelves untouched since 2015?" I was immediately swept up by the storytelling. There was nothing startlingly original about content or form. It's a familiar formula for an American police procedural BUT it was really well done. The intercut timelines worked well, capturing my curiosity and engaging my emotions. I was hooked and having fun.

It helped that Tracy Crosswhite was easy to like. She's not a prima donna. She doesn't have a substance abuse problem. She isn't prone to suicidal ideations as a result of past sins. So she avoids the obvious hard-bitten detective clichés. Instead, she's someone who has the respect of her peers and who enjoys her work as a Seattle PD homicide detective. When she returned to her small home town in Washington State, where the local sheriff knew her parents and watched her and her sister grow up, I got to see a little more of her passion and her frustration but I also saw how well she kept control of herself and focused on getting the results that she needed.

I was drawn in by Tracy's relationship with her younger sister, Sarah and felt strongly enough about Sarah herself that I was angered by my foreknowledge that no matter how brave or resourceful she was, she wouldn't survive.

I thought the book was stronger because it wasn't a one-woman show and it wasn't all about detection. Tracey enlists the help of her school friend, Dan O'Leary, now a lawyer and he handles the courtroom part of the action. I thought the court scenes were well done. Still a little more dramatic than real life but without any 'Perry Mason' histrionics.

The mystery has enough twists that I didn't guess at the outcome. This was partly because of how well-drawn the characters of local Sheriff Roy Calloway and convicted killer Edmund House were written. Both of them came across as untrustworthy and dangerous and neither of them had clean hands. House was chilling throughout. Calloway was... gratifyingly complex.

This was a page-turner of a book, cleverly structured to maintain the tension, engage the emotions, feed the curiosity and deliver excitement by cutting between present and past and between discovery and action.

The upside of having let a very entertaining book sit on my shelves for nine years is that nine more books in the series have already been published. I looking forward to reading my way through them.

I listened to the audiobook version of 'My Sister's Grave', narrated by Emily Sutton-Smith and I'll be sticking with that format for the next book, 'Third Watch'. Click on the SoundCloud link below for a sample of Emily Sutton-Smith's narration.

https://soundcloud.com/brilliance-audio/my-sisters-grave-by-robert-dugoni ( )

Tracy Crosswhite is a homicide detective in Seattle when she receives word that her sister Sara's body has been found twenty years after she disappeared, the same night that Tracy became engaged. Sara and Tracy had just completed a shooting competition and Sara agreed to drive home by herself in Tracy's truck since Tracy was going to a romantic dinner with her boyfriend. The disappearance upended Tracy's life, her parent's life, and the life of Cedar Grove's citizens. Thinking that something was not right about the conviction of Edmund House for her murder, for ten years Tracy tracked down every clue available, but was unable to figure out what happened to her sister. Tracy quit teaching chemistry at Cedar Grove High School after the disappearance to become a policeman and move to Seattle. The constant investigating ended her marriage. Edmund House, the nephew of Parker House, a long-time resident of Cedar Cove, Washington, was convicted without a body. Edmund House had served 6 years previously for kidnapping, rape, and attempted murder of a 16-year-old girl who had escaped from him. He was their prime suspect, but without a body, the evidence to convict was scarce. The story of her renewed investigation with the new evidence from the crime scene is told with flashbacks to what had happened over the last 20 years. ( )

This would be the first Robert Dugoni novel that I’ve ever read and if his other novels are like this, I think I’ve found an author that I’ll enjoy following along with. The book was enjoyable, as were the characters. I liked Tracy and felt sorry for her as I progressed through her stories. As you met other characters, you grew to like them or dislike them. Even some of the characters that you didn’t get to see a lot of.

There were quite a few twist and turns that I wasn’t expecting at all, but I enjoy those in crime novels so it was a pleasure to find something like this. The only thing that was a little irksome was the short chapters but that’s simply a personal annoyance for myself. There weren’t honestly many scenes in the book that were pointless or didn’t contribute to the story path though you may not realize it until the end of the book that something important was slipped into that scene. It all comes together quite nicely in the end.

I was a little miffed about some questions left at the end until I realized it was the first book in a series, so that makes things better. I’m quite curious to see where Tracy ends up at! I’m looking forward to the sequel! ( )

I am a big fan of not only crime books but crime tv. this is my first book by this author and I think it may actually be my last. the story is a great concept and while the pacing has it's high and low i was entertained but not to the point of OMG i need more. ( )