Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, is publishing a new review of In Their Blood by Sharon Potts. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.
In Their Blood by Sharon Potts
Non-series
Oceanview Publishing (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-933515-62-7 (1933515627)
ISBN-13: 978-1-933515-62-5 (9781933515625)
Publication Date: September 2009
List Price: $25.95
Review: The 23-year-old son of a couple, who was brutally murdered in their home, returns to assume custody of his teenage sister and to identify his parent's killer in In Their Blood, a debut thriller by Sharon Potts.
Jeremy Stroeb is in Portugal, avoiding his family and responsibility, when his parents are inexplicably shot to death one night in their bedroom. His mother was a respected accountant, a partner in her firm; his father a politically active economics professor at a local university. Though the police believe the murders to be part of a burglary gone wrong, the only things missing are laptops belonging to the couple. Reasoning that his parents weren't killed by a random stranger, Jeremy takes a job at his mother's firm, and enrolls in classes at his father's university, with the intention of learning more about his parents, their associates, and what one of them might have known that someone was willing to kill for.
Fans of John Grisham's thrillers will likely be drawn to In Their Blood, which works both to the book's advantage and disadvantage. On the plus side is the familiarity of the plot and its pacing, which is really well done, moving the story forward at just the right speed, introducing elements that may be relevant to the outcome -- or not -- and enhancing the suspense without overwhelming it. But familiarity also works on the downside, resulting in a sense of predictability, or maybe inevitability, to the story. In what seems to be an effort on the part of the author to compensate, at least in part, for the latter, there are a lot of sources for suspects and motives ... maybe too many. From the university campus to the corporate boardroom to various relatives and neighbors, there is no shortage of leads for Jeremy to discover and follow up on.
A strong secondary theme in the book is family, in particular, familial relationships and responsibilities. Here it's a little less successful, mostly in the heavy-handed way it's used to drive home some plot points and as motivation for the actions of certain characters.
Overall, though, In Their Blood is a thriller that offers the reader plenty of twists and turns, solid clues to follow and red herrings to distract, and a well-written and developed storyline that is sure to please.
Special thanks to Oceanview Publishing for providing an ARC of In Their Blood for this review.
Review Copyright © 2009 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
If you are interested in purchasing In Their Blood from Amazon.com, please click the button to the right.
Synopsis (from the publisher): Born into a life of privilege, Jeremy Stroeb loves freedom, loathes responsibility and drops out of college to start backpacking across Europe. But this free-spirited drifter crashes back to brutal reality when his parents, Rachel and Daniel Stroeb, are murdered in their home on Miami Beach.
When he returns to Miami, Jeremy assumes guardianship of his teenage sister, Elise, who is traumatized and convinced the killer will be back for her.
With steely, urgent resolve, Jeremy vows to find out what really happened to Rachel Stroeb, the respected CPA and Daniel Stroeb, the controversial professor. Determined to get on the inside of his parents' lives, Jeremy takes a job at the accounting firm where his mother worked, and enrolls at the university where his father taught.
But too many details don't add up. With mounting certainty that his parents were anything but the people he thought they were, Jeremy must face the toughest questions of all. Who were Rachel and Daniel Stroeb? And when will the killer be back for the next of kin?
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