Scraps of Paper
1 journaler for this copy...
This is the first book in the Spookie Town Murder series.
Abigail Sutton's husband has been missing for a year and a half- She is sure that something must have happened to him, but the cops think that he has abandoned her.
Finally his body shows up. He was murdered, probably by a random person. Abigail finallly has to face the idea of being a widow.
At this time she also loses her job as a graphic designer. So what does she do?
In a month, she passes through a town called Spookie and feels such a connection that buys a house on the spot.
Everybody is friendly to her and she flirts with a retired cop a month after she has learned that her husbad was killed. She becomes immediately successful as an artist and while cleaning her conviently cheap house she starts to investigate the disappearance of the previous inhabitants, She finds scraps of paper that a child had hidden around the house, and she is told that Emily Summers and her two children left the house to go and live somewhere else without saying goodbye.
There is something unnatural and cartoony about the main character. She never felt like a real person. Nobody loses a job and finds that it is the perfect moment to buy a house. Nobody has been on her own for two years and has the budget to make such a purchase without even having to ask her bank for a mortgage. She is so heartbroken that she flirts with a cop a month after learning that her husband is actually dead. Nobody becomes so successful as an artist immediately. Even at the end, there is a throwaway comment that learning who had murdered them compensates Emily and her children. Eh, no. I mean, they are dead, but specially the children, they have lost their lives: they will never fall in love, they will never feel teenage angst, they will never know what sex is, they will never feel angry or in love. Sending the culprit to jail is not going to compensate them of anything because... they are not here to begin with.
So these comments bothered me a lot. Recently I read a crime novel by Teresa Driscoll called I Am Watching You and that writer expresses perfectly well the heartbreak, the confusion, the pain in the survivors' lives when somebody disappears. I shouldn't be comparing novels like this but I found several cop-outs throughout this novel,
I would have given the book a lower mark but i thought it was well-written for a cozy murder.
Abigail Sutton's husband has been missing for a year and a half- She is sure that something must have happened to him, but the cops think that he has abandoned her.
Finally his body shows up. He was murdered, probably by a random person. Abigail finallly has to face the idea of being a widow.
At this time she also loses her job as a graphic designer. So what does she do?
In a month, she passes through a town called Spookie and feels such a connection that buys a house on the spot.
Everybody is friendly to her and she flirts with a retired cop a month after she has learned that her husbad was killed. She becomes immediately successful as an artist and while cleaning her conviently cheap house she starts to investigate the disappearance of the previous inhabitants, She finds scraps of paper that a child had hidden around the house, and she is told that Emily Summers and her two children left the house to go and live somewhere else without saying goodbye.
There is something unnatural and cartoony about the main character. She never felt like a real person. Nobody loses a job and finds that it is the perfect moment to buy a house. Nobody has been on her own for two years and has the budget to make such a purchase without even having to ask her bank for a mortgage. She is so heartbroken that she flirts with a cop a month after learning that her husband is actually dead. Nobody becomes so successful as an artist immediately. Even at the end, there is a throwaway comment that learning who had murdered them compensates Emily and her children. Eh, no. I mean, they are dead, but specially the children, they have lost their lives: they will never fall in love, they will never feel teenage angst, they will never know what sex is, they will never feel angry or in love. Sending the culprit to jail is not going to compensate them of anything because... they are not here to begin with.
So these comments bothered me a lot. Recently I read a crime novel by Teresa Driscoll called I Am Watching You and that writer expresses perfectly well the heartbreak, the confusion, the pain in the survivors' lives when somebody disappears. I shouldn't be comparing novels like this but I found several cop-outs throughout this novel,
I would have given the book a lower mark but i thought it was well-written for a cozy murder.
