Preamble
The ‘see also’ section below gives you a hint of the story, its themes, and its style, and is spoiler-free, but reviews themselves aren’t guaranteed to be thus!
If you’re interested in reading my academic work about detective and crime fiction (free PDFs available), check it out here.
See also
These lists capture other detective/crime stories and characters that I thought of as I was reading this piece. I won’t explain why, to avoid spoilers, but they’re associations and not ‘if you liked this, then you’ll love…’ recommendations!
- Quincy M.E.
- Perry Mason (original!)
Review (4 out of 5)
I happily jumped into this, the fourth in the series, without having read any of the previous books because good mystery series are built for exactly that. This one worked perfectly; I had a sense that there were some elements of the main character, Emma Thornton’s, family life that probably had backstory to them, but there was nothing here that wouldn’t make sense for a first-time reader.
I enjoyed the central mystery here; there were blinds and misdirects aplenty, and there was a well drawn family set-up surrounding the victim, Sally, with resonances across generations that added interest and enabled alternative theories of the crime. The various suspects’ motivations seemed natural and I had some different theories as the story progressed, which is always a good sign.
I found the parenting and personal-life elements the least compelling, perhaps in part because there was in-series context I was missing, but I appreciated that Tolbert avoids any too-direct parallelism between the crime being solved and the lawyer-cum-detective’s personal circumstances.
Stylistically, I found some of the descriptive paragraphs without dialogue had a real ‘stage directions’ quality, especially in the early stages of the novel. I think this works for the genre, with audiences who are inevitably used to similar cold-opens on TV and film, but it might not be to every reader’s taste.
I read this novel as an ARC on NetGalley, and there were some minor blips that will hopefully be tidied up before general release. There are a few details that were obviously changed during the drafting process that haven’t all been caught: the accused, Jeremy, is Adam at one point, and his father calls him 19 when he’s clearly 21 elsewhere; and Dr Rayford crops up a few times as “Raymond” (I did think perhaps this might be his first name, but that’s given elsewhere as Douglas).
I’ll update this review to include spoilers once the book has been published.
Check out my short story collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies via preorders now!
Dominique Gracia 
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