Trace

Patricia Cornwall
Trace:  A Scarpetta Novel
435 pp.
New York:  Putnam, 2004

Thumbs down for this mystery!  Cornwall did not develop her characters, leaving the reader wondering why and what would be their motivations.  The parents of the murdered 14 year old girl are totally unbelievable in their peculiar relationship and their feelings toward other people.  Scarpetta is yet another forensic medical examiner performing stellar autopsies under bureaucratic pressure. Her side-kick, a former rough cop, never leaves her side, even when she attends professional meetings. It's just not done in the real world.  This particular novel is also disjointed, jumping from story to story, with the secondary story not being understood or developed in conjunction to the main narrative. Because I enjoy mystery novels I may read another of her many published novels.  Perhaps she has done better work.

A Cold Christmas

A Cold Christmas                                                                                              

Susan Wren Mysteries

by Charlene Weir

244 pp.

New York, NY:  Thomas Dunne Books, 2001

  
It's Christmas and Caley James has no money, no working furnace, and she's sick with the flu.  Her three children are left to their devices and her no-good, no-account, low-life ex husband and his mother. Dragging herself from her bed to play at the organ at the local church, she has to earn money to pay for Christmas. That is, until the furnace man turns up dead in her basement.  This starts a police investigation which Police Chief Susan Wren must undertake alone as most of her staff have been stricken with influenza.  Through in a few nosey neighbours to complicate matters and the pathos runs to comedy.

   The author has developed a cast of characters are who believable and sympathetic.  Her settings are every day homes, which demonstrate that murder can happen anywhere - even in your basement. Some characters have criminal pasts, whereas others are simply nasty individuals. A precocious child who must protect his adoptive mother and his dad pulls at the heartstrings. Who among us has not had a Christmas go awry?

Also by this author:  Murder Takes Two, Family Practice, Consider the Crows, The Winter Widow