Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, is publishing a new review of Final Approach by Rachel Brady. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.
Final Approach by Rachel Brady
Non-series
Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-59058-655-7 (1590586557)
ISBN-13: 987-1-59058-655-6 (9871590586556)
Publication Date: October 2009
List Price: $24.95
Review: Rachel Brady introduces Emily Locke, an experienced sky diver still mourning the loss of her husband and infant daughter in a boating accident four years ago, whose help is requested by a most unlikely source, in Final Approach, the author's debut mystery.
Richard Cole was the police officer in charge of investigating, and mishandling, the accident that killed Emily's family. Forced to leave the police department, he's now a private investigator looking into the disappearance of a child in Texas, far from Emily's home in Ohio. His only lead is the Gulf Coast Skydiving School. Richard knows of only one person who may help him gather information, but Emily is loathe to assist him. Still, she can't bear the thought that another mother might lose a daughter because of her unwillingness to help. She travels to Texas and joins the school as an instructor. Not skilled in the more subtle aspects of investigative stealth, she's quickly caught looking through the school's financial records, but not before learning that there are numerous entries of income that don't seem directly related to the business. Though the owners are now suspicious of her, she's allowed to stay on, later overhearing talk of trafficking in children. Unsure of how to proceed, and lacking concrete evidence to back up her story, she and Richard work together to determine who is in charge of this child kidnapping ring, and how they can shut it down.
The plot of Final Approach is somewhat implausible and at times doesn't seem fully developed, but the entertaining and well-drawn characters, especially those of the sky diving school, tend to compensate. That one of them is a cold-blooded villain is not unexpected, but it's hard to pick out which of the group it is. Overall, though Final Approach is a fast reading book, interesting and quirky in its own way, it is not especially memorable.
Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of Final Approach and to Poisoned Pen Press for providing an ARC of the book for this review.
Review Copyright © 2009 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
If you are interested in purchasing Final Approach from Amazon.com, please click the button to the right.
Synopsis (from the publisher): Sometimes clues just fall from the sky. Four years ago Emily Locke's life was shattered when her infant daughter and husband were lost in an inexplicable accident. She has nearly rebuilt her fragile mental health when Richard Cole, a disgraced former police detective now working as a PI, resurfaces. He wants help he says only she can provide—reconnaissance at a Texas skydiving establishment over a thousand miles away. Emily knows better than to work with him again, but can't refuse when she learns it's about a missing boy. She identifies too greatly with the new missing child case.
At Gulf Coast Skydiving, similarities between this new case and Emily's troubled past make it increasingly difficult for her to stay objective. Soon she's convinced that she is somehow connected to whoever took little Casey Lyons. Someone at the quiet, rural airstrip knows what happened to the boy ... and to Emily's own daughter.
To find Casey before it's too late, Emily will have to make sense of the menacing parallels between his case and her daughter's.
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